


Breaking In

by SomewhereApart



Series: Breaking In [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, oq au, prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2018-03-04 11:35:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 42
Words: 474,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3066404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomewhereApart/pseuds/SomewhereApart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robin Locksley has hit rock bottom. A rash decision to help his family has lead to him nearly losing them instead, and now he's woken up to discover he accidentally broke into in the home of a stranger - single mom and ad executive Regina Mills - while stumbling home drunk last night. Can these neighbors overcome their rocky start to find something they need in each other?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this prompt: i really want an “i accidentally broke into your house/apartment because my friend lives next door to you and i was in the area, drunk, and i thought i was climbing into the right window and falling asleep on the right couch (and i did wonder when my friend got two cats but i didn’t question it) so now i’m hungover and shirtless in your living room so um hi howya doin” au please make it happen

He is piss drunk.

So sloshed that the world is wobbling, spinning backward on its axis, making everything tip and spin like he's riding the tilt-a-whirl at the amusement park with Roland.

Roland.

Roland who is three today, and whose birthday party he missed for no good reason whatsoever. For a truly horrible reason in fact, and that reason is spite.

Bloody, selfish, sodding, stupid spite.

It's his own fault, he supposes. He'd cocked up his whole relationship six weeks before his boy, his whole light, his everything, had his birthday, and so the party he and Marian had talked of just a month ago, the one with the cupcakes and the balloons and the clown (he hates clowns, but she loves them and Roland laughs and laughs at every sight of them) had gone off without so much as a word to him that it was actually happening.

It wasn't for lack of trying - he's been calling Marian twice daily for weeks, asking that she please speak to him. That she let him explain. That he'd done it for them, what she'd seen, what she'd found. He'd done it so they could afford things like rented clowns and Cookie Monster cupcakes. (And eggs and bread and Christmas presents.)

And it's not as though that stodgy old couple would even suffer for the things he'd nicked and fenced - the stinking rich are well insured, and they were just baubles, he was careful not to take anything that looked sentimental or irreplaceable.

But she'll have none of it, won't even speak to him except to tell him he's lucky she's not calling the police to report him and have him arrested. Have him thrown in jail and locked away and Robin thanks his lucky stars he's so close to his boy because he knows, he is certain, that the only reason she hasn't turned him in for his crimes is the damage it would do Roland to grow up with a convict for a father. A thief. A common, petty, vile thief. That's what she'd called him.

And so he is drunk tonight. Piss drunk. So drunk the bartender took his keys to ensure he didn't stumble into his car and attempt to drive home (despite his promises he would do no such thing). He is drunk and the world is spinning, and he's been walking for what seems likes hours but cannot be more than a quarter of an hour. Despite the fact he's stopped for a piss twice on the way, saying a silent apology to whomever's camellias he showered a few blocks back.

But now he's here, on this street, where he's been staying with John these past few weeks. It's lined with row houses, each identical to the other, quaint red brick all crammed up together in pairs and bloody confusing in his current state to be honest. But he makes his way down the block on stumbling feet, carrying himself along until he reaches the right house, and it's not until he turns the knob and feels it give not an inch that he remembers John is out of town for the weekend and he's left his keys at the sodding bar, a five-years walk back from where he now stands.

He's half a mind to sleep right there on the stoop like a vagrant, but he's better than that, and frankly it's a bit cold out (he's not feeling it much, whiskey-soaked as he is, but he can tell it's chilly). And he's not a common, petty, vile thief for nothing. A locked door is no match for Robin Locksley, even drunk as a skunk. There's a side window, one that's never locked, and he makes his way there, nearly comes to blows with the rubbish bin in the alleyway en route. Sure enough, it's unlocked and he lifts the sill and hoists himself up, climbs through rather gracelessly (it's a good thing he'd been sober when he'd robbed that estate, now isn't it? He'd never have gotten away with it if he'd been this sloppy).

But then he's faced with the stairs that lead up to the bedrooms, and that's... That's just too much for his inebriated knees to handle.

He opts for the sofa instead, stumbling there and planting facedown. It's rather more stiff than he remembers it being and he has to push aside a children's chapter book he doesn't remember them owning. Something far beyond Roland's nonexistent reading level - all the colorful covers in the world won't help Narnia make a lick of sense to a toddler, and Robin thinks he'll tell John so just as soon as he gets back to town next week.

It's the last thing he thinks before he sinks under into oblivion.

**.::.**

"Mom."

It's a phantom address, something she hears, but doesn't. Something that could easily be a dream.

"Mom!"

Regina grunts, burrows down further into her pillow.

" _Mom!"_

That one was more forceful, more insistent, her little boy's voice clearing out the sleepy cobwebs of her mind. Regina cracks an eye open and looks at the clock. Ten to six. She's an early riser, but it's another twenty minutes before her usual wake up time.

"Mom, there's someone downstairs," Henry insists urgently, and Regina reaches out for him, waving him closer when her outstretched fingers can't quite grasp his golden snitch pajamas.

"There's nobody downstairs," she rasps, trying to be reassuring despite the sleepy scratch of her voice. Henry has a vivid imagination, one that runs wild from time to time, and every now and then this will happen. He will wake convinced something in a dream is real, and need her to talk him down.

"No, Mom,  _listen!"_  he hisses, particularly frantic this time. Fearful.

Regina sighs, half awake now, and tells herself to stop being selfish and allay his concerns. So she listens, makes a point to look like she's listening. And that's when she hears it - a great, heaving snore - and she bolts upright in bed, heart in her throat, reaching for Henry and tugging him close.

There is someone downstairs.

There is someone in her house, in their house, someone male - or a woman who snores like a drunken trucker.

She hears her mother in her head, warning her that this wasn't the best of neighborhoods despite its charm. That she could do better, that she and Henry could be safer if only she'd let Cora and Henry Sr. help her for God's sake. She'd told her mother she was being paranoid, that this was a perfectly safe neighborhood, that the schools were good and it was an easy commute downtown for her, and that moving here was the smart, practical thing to do even if the neighborhood was still on its way from dodgy to trendy.

But now it is six AM on a Sunday and there is someone in her home and Regina's heart is hammering hard, so hard she can practically hear it, her mouth gone dry.

"Henry stay here," she whispers firmly, sliding from the bed and reaching for the Louisville Slugger she keeps tucked behind the nightstand (it's a safe neighborhood, sure, but one can never be too prepared). She grips it tightly in sweaty palms as she takes cautious steps closer and closer to the stairwell. The old hardwoods creak under her feet, chilly beneath her bare toes.

He's in the living room, she realizes as she takes the stairs one by one, drawing nearer to the sound of their intruder sawing logs. But then, where else would he be? Beneath the kitchen table? Sacked out on the rug just inside door beside their discarded shoes?

How did he even get  _in_  here? she wonders, but as she reaches the bottom of the stairs she sees the side window open wide, curtains billowing in the breeze, letting in gusts of chilly air. She'd opened it the other day when she was cleaning, had wanted to let out some of the stuffy, stale air pent up by the last dregs of winter and let in something fresh and crisp. She must have forgotten to lock the latch when she closed it - how  _stupid_ could she be?

She won't be making that mistake again, that's for sure.

With a heavy swallow she rounds the wall into the living room, expecting to find one of the hobos who takes up a bench overnight at the park a few blocks down, some huge, smelly oaf leaving the stench of body odor and cheap hooch on her dove gray sofa.

What she  _does_ find is a step up from that, at least. On said sofa is sprawled a man about her age, who would not be unattractive in other circumstances - circumstances where he was not slack-jawed and drooling, his jacket slipping off his shoulders and essentially straightjacketing him (a plus for her if it turns out he's crazy and she has to use the bat after all), rumpled t-shirt rucked up to reveal a few inches of toned belly. He snorts another snore - he's drunk and loose, smells like a distillery - smacks his lips sleepily and huffs out a breath.

Okay. Well. Might as well get this over with.

She keeps her distance, keeps her hold on the bat, and barks sharply, "Wake up!"

He doesn't even stir.

Great.

Regina extends the tip of the bat, gives him a light jab in the ribs. "Hey!"

He frowns deeply then, shifts away from the contact.

Regina scowls, pulls the bat back a few inches and, well, punches him with it. Square in the side of his ribs.

That does it.

**.::.**

Robin wakes with a start, wheezing, his ribs throbbing, his head pounding, light streaming in and stabbing him straight in the brainstem even through his now-scrunched-closed eyelids. He curls in on himself, away from the pain, tries to sink back under into sleep and gets another jab in the ribs for his trouble.

"What the hell are you doing in my house?" a voice asks him, and it is definitely not John. It is entirely unfamiliar, and as he slings an arm over his face to block the devilish light that assaults him, his fingers brush the back of the couch. He realizes with a plummeting, sinking feeling in his gut that it is upholstered, and John's is leather, and this is not John's sofa which means this is not John's house, and that's just bloody great. Now Marian can add home invasion to his list of vices.

He drops the leaden weight of his arm back to the sofa, squinting against the sunlight and trying to make out the vision of the woman standing over him. If she could just move a few feet to the left, she'd be blocking the better part of the window, and he wouldn't feel like someone was burying an ice pick in his skull with every traitorous beat of his heart. He fights to focus, and there she is. She's slight, looks even more so in her thin silk pajama set (it's chilly in here, and her nipples are hard beneath the fabric, and he feels like a heel for even noticing, he feels even more of a jerk at her state of undress, at the sure terror a woman living alone - and she must be, or her husband or boyfriend would certainly have been the one rousing him now - waking to discover a strange man in her house). But she's staring him down unblinkingly, gripping a bat in both hands, it's end aimed right at Robin (he's lucky he woke to a jab instead of a pummel, he thinks).

He swallows thickly, and says dumbly, "This isn't John's house."

Her frown deepens, her mouth drawing into a tighter scowl (and a lovely mouth it is – she's altogether quite lovely in fact, with dark hair that doesn't quite reach her shoulders, presently tousled from sleep, equally dark eyes that are glaring skeptically at him), and then she relaxes and lets the bat fall to her side, gripped loosely in one hand.

"No, that's next door, you drunken idiot," she sighs bitterly, tossing the bat to the floor with a clatter that reverberates in his head like cannonfire. She crosses her arms tightly over her chest now, tilts her chin up just a little so she's looking down on him even more, regal as a queen despite her pajamas and tangled hair. "You're the friend who's been staying with him."

"I am," Robin confirms, and then finally attempts to sit, gingerly, his stomach pitching and rolling. Christ. "But I'm not drunk anymore," he murmurs, his mouth filling rapidly with saliva, spit pulled from somewhere inside his horribly dehydrated body, though he's no idea how. He's going to vomit. Lovely. He drops his head into his hands, breathes slowly in an attempt to quell the rising tide and breathes, "Wish I was still drunk."

"Because that's just what you need," she huffs, and then, "Don't you dare throw up in my living room."

He nods slightly, regrets it immediately, both because of the stabbing pain in his head and the fresh surge of nausea the action evokes. He pulls one hand from where he'd had them pressed against his eyeballs and fists it, brings it to his lips, tells himself to reign it in. To tamp it down. Useless things that will not help in the slightest.

"Oh, for God's sake," she grouses, and then he's being jerked and yanked by surprisingly strong hands, pulled to his feet and oh god, that's not helpful, that's not good, this is not good, he's going to -

**.::.**

Regina shoves her drunken stranger into the main floor powder room just in time. He hits his knees in front of the toilet bowl, goes down hard enough that she nearly winces in sympathy, but then he's retching. Loudly. Forcefully. Letting forth a wet, sloshing torrent into the toilet. She finds herself feeling much less sympathetic. At least he held it in until the bathroom, she tells herself. It could have been worse.

She leaves him there and heads for the kitchen, starting a pot of coffee and brewing it extra strong as she tries to remember his name. Rodney? Robert?

She's not what one would call good friends with John but she knows him, he has a dog, Tuck, that Henry adores. So they talk from time to time, and Regina knows he has an extended houseguest. A friend down on his luck, something about a relationship gone sour, and she remembers John telling her he's "a good guy." Whatever that means.

She's seen him once or twice, coming and going - might even have recognized him more quickly if he hadn't been passed out in her home and she hadn't been scared out of her wits. It's possible she may even have thought he was attractive (very attractive, incredibly so, she has a secret preference for men with a bit of stubble, for eyes that blue, for that tortured, gloomy look he has about him). So she remembers that John had spoken well of him, had for a moment entertained the thought that if the temporary good guy houseguest turned into a permanent good guy roommate, maybe she'd even attempt to get to know him. Now, though...

Now that good guy is still vomiting up a night of bad decisions in her powder room as she climbs the stairs to reassure her son that they haven't been the victims of a vicious home invasion, and she finds herself infinitely less attracted to him than she had been before.

**.::.**

Robin throws up an entire bottle of Jameson, and then his stomach lining, his actual stomach, small intestine and part of his spleen he's certain. He vomits until his throat burns and his eyes are wet, his nose running.

God, he's a mess. No wonder Marian wants nothing to do with him anymore.

He doesn't  _deserve_  Roland, not right now, not like this. What the bloody hell was he thinking, robbing that house. Sure, he's been laid off for months now, and the absolutely shit job market has kept him that way, and he's a day shy of the food shelf, of food stamps, of just tossing it all in and applying to flip burgers for a living if that's what it takes. He  _should_  have applied to flip burgers, but he has a bit of pride, too much pride perhaps, and he did a bit of work for Henry Mills, and he knew the house would be empty. Knew they were off on holiday in Europe for several weeks, and that their security system was easily overridden. He'd spent his teenage years running with the wrong crowd, nicking things from shops without getting caught, nicking things from homes until it got to be a bit too close one night, and he'd realized it was bloody stupid to throw his life away for cheap thrills.

He hasn't stolen a thing since he was seventeen, not until a month ago, and now he knows why. However noble his reasons, he's lowered himself, dragged himself down in the dirt out of pride, given in to temptation and told himself it was justified - stealing from the rich to line his poor pockets. And look where it's gotten him - puking his guts up in a stranger's home, in a tiny powder room that smells of rose and spice (and now whiskey and vomit), saved only by the fact that she seems to have at least some knowledge of John, enough that she didn't call the police immediately.

Or maybe she has, maybe he's going to walk out of that bathroom to find some shiny silver bracelets waiting for him, the price for absconding with several ruby and emerald ones from a rich, overbearing lady and hoping nobody would be the wiser until it was too late to catch him.

He supposes he ought to face the music, ought to get the hell out of her home, and so he flushes his sick down the toilet and drags himself to his feet, gripping the edges of the little pedestal sink and staring at his face in the small mirror above it.

Good Christ, he hardly recognizes himself. Eyes blood-shot, face sallow, stubble an overgrown mess. He blows his nose, palms a bit of water into his mouth to rinse the taste of bile away (it does little good, his mouth is a swamp), splashes another cool palmful onto his face and pats it with her delicate hand towel, then heads toward the door she'd thankfully closed on him.

He takes slow, gentle steps, his stomach still a shaky, unsteady wreck, and when he opens the door, the strong scent of coffee is both a blessing and a curse. Coffee will right him, he thinks, or at least it will be a start, and it smells heavenly and strong. But the idea of anything, even a drop, hitting his belly makes it roll and lurch perilously again.

He turns toward the soft sound of her voice, takes three steps and is in the kitchen. The kitchen where the lovely woman who by all rights should have clobbered him with a bat not half an hour ago is now wrapped in a cozy grey robe, pouring milk over cereal for a young boy.

"Christ, you have a child."

As if Robin could not feel any worse. The boy's older than Roland by a good several years, but still young, not yet a teenager. Nine, perhaps eleven. A young single mother, then, she probably is, and she's somehow tasked with explaining the stinking drunk in their home to a child.

She arches a brow at him, a silent admonishment for his language, his existence, his everything, Robin is certain. And then she answers simply, "I do," and heads for the counter, for the coffee. There's a steaming mug of it already sitting on the table, a large, round scarlet ceramic thing, nearly a bowl, the coffee inside pale with milk. Next to it is a bit of toast with peanut butter smeared across it, a single, dainty bite taken out of a corner.

"I'm Henry," the boy tells him, distracting him from his dull perusal of her breakfast.

"I'm Robin," he answers in kind. "And I'm very sorry to be in your home uninvited. That was wrong of me."

The boy's mother snorts her disbelief, her back still to him. But the boy himself just shrugs, and says, "You live with John."

"I do."

"Can I come over and play with Tuck?"

So the boy knows the dog, then. He's an old shaggy mutt, a wonderful dog - one who at this very moment is probably prowling the door with hunger, annoyed at being forgotten for the night.

"I used to walk him and feed him when John wasn't home," Henry explains before Robin can answer. "But now you're there, so I haven't seen him in a while. I have a bone for him - Mom let me get it from the store last week."

"That was very kind of you," Robin tells the boy, and God, his head is splitting. Is he swaying? He feels as if he's swaying on his feet, but can't tell if it's real or just the lingering effects of his stupor. "I've no problem with you coming by, but only if it's alright with your mum."

"It's not," the mother says coolly (and to his complete lack of surprise), heading back his way now, a beat up old travel mug in hand. It's one of those cheap plastic ones you'd get at the Starbucks, and it's gotten wet inside, the paper decorated with fall leaves and something about pumpkin spice gone rumpled and smeared with condensation. Probably took a run through the dishwasher - he'd done the same to one of Marian's once, and she'd huffed and griped and said something about double-walled insulation and hand-wash only, and he'd felt like a heel for simply trying to help.

This woman, this woman whose name he's yet to catch despite his intimate acquaintance with her toilet bowl and his night spent in the unintentional hospitality of her home - this woman pushes the mug into his hands, and tells him, "Coffee. Black. Don't ask for milk or sugar, I'm not a coffeehouse, and you're not a guest." She nods down toward the mug and says, "And I want that back."

"Of course," he murmurs, shifting it in his grip. His stomach rolls again at the thought of drinking anything, even this, but he is grateful for the gesture - the wholly unnecessary, kind gesture. She ought to have booted him out on his ass and let him puke on the curb and then stumble next door to John's. So he tells her, "Thank you. And I'm very sorry."

"Good," she tells him, crossing her arms over her chest again, and by God, she really is a picture up close. Those dark eyes are brown, almost black, like bitter dark chocolate, and they're lovely even when she's frowning at him. She ought to look more hateful, he thinks, more disgusted, and she does look both of those things, but he thinks there's a bit of pity underneath. Maybe even a speck of sympathy that makes him feel even lower, because he is entirely undeserving of that. And then they harden, hone sharp like flint, and she tells him, "Now get out."

"Yes, of course," he murmurs, and he nods a goodbye at the boy, then turns for the door.

**.::.**

"Well," Regina tells Henry as she takes her seat at the table, listens for the sound of the door closing behind their intruder. "That was eventful."

He's spooning up Apple Jacks (they're a bit too sugary for her approval, she doesn't allow them often, but he's had a fairly traumatizing morning - or at least he should have, she imagines, but he's entirely too trusting of John, and as soon as she'd told him the man on the sofa was a friend of his, that he was there by mistake and thought their place was John's, he'd been entirely unafraid. Still. Apple Jacks it is, this morning), slurping milk off his spoon and earning a look of disapproval.

"Why can't I go play with Tuck?" he asks after his next bite. "Robin seems okay."

"Robin is a drunk," Regina tells him. "Or at least, he's a man who drinks enough he can't even find his way home properly. I don't trust him, I don't know him. You can play with Tuck when John is home - and  _only_  when John his home, do you understand me, young man? I don't want to see you over there with Robin."

Henry sulks, but nods, and and swirls his spoon through his cereal, as Regina nibbles at toast that has long gone cold. Tack that onto the man's sins - lingering long enough to make her breakfast sub-par.

She's lying to Henry, though. She doesn't  _trust_  Robin, but she has a gut feeling that he's not a danger. That letting Henry over for some fetch with the pup wouldn't do any harm. Still, she's a mother, and it's her job to protect him - which means choosing her head over her gut and keeping him far, far away from the man who broke into their home in a drunken stupor.

**.::.**

The morning is cold, colder than he was anticipating, and Robin tugs his collar up against his neck for even the short walk next door to John's, lifting that travel mug for a sip of hot coffee after all. It's dark and strong, delicious. It doesn't exactly settle his stomach, but it doesn't make it worse either, so he sips again. The woman makes good coffee.

He climbs the stoop on weary legs, even those few steps enough to make him feel tired. He needs to drink a bit of this coffee, then have another lie-down. Sleep off this bloody hangover.

But when he reaches for the knob he remembers just why he'd ended up at the neighbors in the first place - his lack of keys, the long walk between home and the bar. Christ, it still sounds like miles. Ages. And the idea of scaling six feet of wall to climb in that side window is significantly more daunting than it had been when he was sloshed last night. He hopes for a false rock, for something, even kicks up the corner of the doormat even though he doubts John is that predictable.

He can see his breath, his fingers chilly as he fishes out his phone to call John, hoping there's a neighbor with a spare key he can wake at this ungodly hour and beg forgiveness and entrance into John's place.

Tuck woofs from the other side of the door as the phone rings and rings and rings and then John picks up, his voice a low, gravelly thing when he mutters, "This better be good if you're waking me before seven."

"I'm locked out," Robin sighs, "And hungover, I feel like shit, I cannot climb in that window."

"Thank God," John mutters, "The neighbors would probably think the place was being robbed."

Robin thinks of the ease with which he crept into the neighbors house last night, and doubts very much that the neighbors would even notice - granted, last night it was dark, everyone was asleep. Mrs. Lucas across the street was not eyeing him from the other side of her open curtains the way she is now.

"Does one of those neighbors, by chance, have a spare key? Or is there one hidden somewhere you've not told me about, or…?"

"Regina Mills," John tells him and Robin's heart lurches into his throat. Regina Mills. He's heard that name before, Regina – had heard it from the lips of both Cora and Henry Mills while he installed their new sound system, and then again when he'd offered to teach the older man the ins and out of their new security system (the one he'd so egregiously taken advantage of in order to pilfer several thousand dollars of jewelry not so long ago. Just his luck that's where he has to go bed for entry to his own home). "She's two doors down - 5802. Her kid walks Tuck sometimes when I'm gone. She's usually up early, she's probably awake by now."

If his heart was in his throat before, it is clear down into his shoes now.

Regina.

Her name was Regina.

The woman whose home he has just left, the woman in 5802 with the dark eyes and the strong coffee, whose sofa he spent the night on, and whose toilet he upended his guts into this morning. And whose parents he apparently robbed. He has to return to her and ask for keys.

He wants to say this day couldn't get any worse, but he knows better than to tempt fate like that - it could always get worse than personal humiliation. So he says goodbye to John and trudges back the way he came.

He knocks, and then waits, and after a few minutes the door opens, and there she is again, still scowling (scowling again, he's sure, but it's all she's done at him all morning, so he cannot imagine the calmer look he hopes she held once he was out of her hair).

"What?" she asks him, the door open only several inches, enough to show her face and a column of her body, and little more. Enough to make it clear she's not going to be welcoming him back inside.

"I'm locked out," he admits sheepishly. "John says you've his spare keys."

She sizes him up, looks down, up, down again. "Locked out."

"Yes. The bartender took my keys last night, round about the same time he cut me off."

"Well, thank heavens for that," she mutters, stepping back and opening the door wider. "You probably would've killed someone. Or yourself." She holds a hand out to gesture for him to enter, although it's a move that speaks more clearly of annoyance than invitation.

Then she heads for the kitchen again, throwing him a glance over her shoulder as she goes. Wary, this time. And he supposes she ought to be. It's one thing to find a man in your home and kick him out, it's another entirely to let him back in.

She stops suddenly, halfway through the living room, and turns. "That's why you broke in," she realizes. "You didn't have your key."

"I'm afraid so."

"Well, that explains that," she mutters, and then she's walking again, heading for the kitchen (it's clean now, dishes cleared off the table and her son nowhere to be found, although Robin hears footsteps upstairs, the boy must be up in his room).

"I truly am sorry," he tells her, lingering near the table as she heads for the phone, lifts it and punches the buttons. He feels a twist of anxious guilt in his gut, both for disturbing her peace again and for what he'd done to her parents, what he's taken from her family. He lifts the coffee again and takes a long pull, trying to swallow the guilt down with the bitter brew.

"You've already said that," she mutters, lifting the phone to her ear, waiting. Robin runs his thumb along the back of one of the kitchen chairs, smooth wood beneath his skin. "John, it's Regina. Did you send Robin here for the spare keys?" She looks at him then, a smirk tugging at her lips, something wicked and dark about it before she says, "Oh, it's fine. I was already awake." He expects her to continue, to tell John exactly why and how she was rudely awakened this morning, but she doesn't. She simply, "Mmhmm"s and says, "Of course," and then, "Enjoy the rest of your trip," and "Goodbye."

As she hangs up, Robin sighs softly, and murmurs, "Thank you. I'll tell him what happened, but… thank you regardless."

She's rummaging in one of the kitchen drawers, pulling out a simple keychain with two shiny gold keys attached and holding them out for him.

"Goodbye, Robin," she tells him, as he lifts his hand to take the keys from her.

Right. She's been more than hospitable and it's time for him to get out.

Still, he can't help saying to her, "If you need anything, I'm just down the street."

"Excellent," she smiles, a vicious little baring of teeth. "If I need someone to get drunk, break into my home, frighten my son and throw up in my bathroom, I know just who to call."

"Right," he mutters, his stomach burning with shame, because she's right, she's absolutely right, what she must think of him (has every right to think of it). He lifts the half-full mug still gripped in his other hand and murmurs, "I'll get this back to you shortly. The coffee is excellent, by the way. Thank you."

"I know," she tells him primly, staring him down from her place at the counter, unmoving, unbending.

Robin heads for the door, heads for John's, and sleeps the rest of the day away.


	2. Chapter 2

Robin wakes again in the late afternoon, and still feels like utter shit.

He needs to drink something other than that tumbler of black coffee, probably ought to put some proper food in his belly. And he needs a shower, he thinks with a grimace and a whiff of himself, dearly hoping that he smelled at least somewhat better at six o’clock this morning when he was sprawled on the neighbor’s sofa.

The shower will probably do him the most good, he thinks, so he peels himself from his bed and trudges down the hall to the bathroom, cranking the shower on hot and then running the tap cold and scooping up palmful after palmful of water into his mouth. He brushes his teeth, stares at his miserable face in the mirror as he does.

_How did I get here?_ he wonders. Not too long ago, just a few years, he’d been a reasonably successful man - well, not successful, exactly, but getting by well enough. He’d had his music, had been fronting his own band with semi-regular gigs, and had his day job to really pay the bills. And he’d had Marian. Had had her smiles and her passion and her bright mind, and the softness of her skin pressed against him at night.

And then his band had dissolved, and Marian had turned up pregnant, and over time it seemed they’d grown apart. If he’s honest, he has to admit things had not been good, even before the burglary came to light. Maybe even before the layoffs had left him jobless and dependent on her income to keep them afloat. They’d done more fighting than fucking, it seemed. More bickering than flirting or kindness.

There’s a small part of him that thinks maybe it’s for the best, this separation, maybe he’s no good for her anymore. Not if he can’t provide, not if he can’t pull himself up by his bootstraps and be a man. Better for her, anyway. But without her, without Roland… look at what he’s turned into.

A drunk, penniless, haggard-looking fool.

It stops today, he decides, spitting minty froth into the sink, and then looking his reflection in the eyes.

  
“This is the worst day of your life,” he tells himself. “You will do better now. You will be a better man. For him, and for her. You will be a man deserving of them. Starting right now.”

Robin cleans himself up - shaves and showers, fixes himself the single egg left in the fridge, and washes it down with the last of the juice.

He thinks to call Marian again, to try to see his son tonight, but when he finds his cell phone in his coat pocket, it’s completely dead. The set of spare keys he’d gotten from Regina Mills  tumbles out of the pocket and down to the floor, and he realizes it doesn’t matter that the phone is dead - he’s no car and no keys anyway. Not at the moment.

With a sigh, he slings the coat on, and heads back out into the chill to retrieve them.

**  
  
**

**.::.**

**  
  
**

Regina is sitting in the chair next to her front window, turning the pages of a book she’s not entirely sure is worth continuing to read. This is what she gets for buying things based on the pretty packaging, she thinks, sighing and finally closing the book, letting her hand rest over the deceptively alluring cover. It’s always a disappointment – finding out something that seemed so pleasant on the surface is so low-quality underneath.

_Case in point,_ she thinks, glancing out the window just in time to see her early-morning home invader trudge by, hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat, head ducked down. This is how she’s used to seeing him - through screen and glass, and from feet away, where he looks on the surface like he might be intriguing underneath. But up close, under the surface, well… Her bathroom still smells vaguely of sweat and vomit, heavily clobbered with the scent of the apple-spice candle she’s been burning in there since he left.

He reaches for the collar of his coat, pulls it higher around his neck, and she wonders why he doesn’t have a scarf (doesn’t have gloves, either, and the wind has picked up, is blowing the bare branches back and forth on the trees that line their block).

Then Henry asks if she’ll look over his book report, and she stops wondering about the man and his cold neck altogether.

**  
  
**

**.::.**

**  
  
**

The bar is open, but not busy, Baltimore isn’t playing today, and so the collection of people staring up at the TVs broadcasting the latest sports game is small. Underwhelming.

Robin is grateful for it – less of an audience to his shame, and no need to shout at the bartender to be heard.

He slinks up to the edge of the bar, and waits as he watches the man pull a beer. It’s the same bartender as last night - August, he thinks his name was, although he can’t really be certain. There had been a lot of whiskey between then and now, and Robin has foggy, empty patches of time he cannot truly recall. He studies the other man as he waits: dark hair, stubbled cheeks and a friendly smile (important for a barman) for the girl he’s currently serving. Robin imagines he will not spare the same kind smile for him, but he’ll find out soon enough.

August (is it August?), turns from his customer and makes his way toward Robin, wiping down a wet ring on the bar as he goes. He limps just slightly; Robin hadn’t remembered that.

When he gets within a foot of Robin, he simply says, “You’re back,” and it startles him a little – he hadn’t realized that the bartender even knew he was there.

“I am,” he says, and then, “If I could get my keys…”

The man looks at him for a minute, his face unreadable, and then he turns and reaches for a plain white envelope, tucked next to the cash register.

“Here you are, Prince of Thieves,” he tells him, almost smiling, like they share some sort of secret, and Robin has a flash of memory, of running his mouth about how perhaps Robin Hood had the right idea, you know, stealing from the rich, giving to the poor, he was poor, he could use some damned riches, and it wasn’t as though those rich sons of bitches were missing them any, and barman, pour me another, why don’t you?

He feels his ears go hot with mortification and reaches for the envelope, hears his keys jingle as they slide around inside, but there’s something else in there, he can feel something rigid against his fingertips. He slips open the flap of the envelope to find keys, and his bank card. Christ, he hadn’t even realized he was missing that.

And slipped alongside there, a receipt.

His bill from the night before, he realizes with a heavy swallow, pulling it out and staring at it. Had he really had _that much_ to drink? What had he been thinking? He could have gone to the liquor store and bought twice the booze for half the price, drowned his sorrows at home and saved himself the sea of embarrassment he’s been swimming in for every waking moment of the day.

“Your card was declined,” August tells him coolly, and Robin nods slightly, mutters that that sounds about right.

He’s absolutely skint, has no way to pay off this tab.

And the man must know that, but still he stands there, expectantly. Waiting.

Robin looks at the bar, at his own hands as they clutch keys and card, then he looks up, and admits, “I’ve no money; I lost my job.”

“So you told me,” August tells him, and Robin wonders how exactly a man can look so cordial but make him feel like such shit at the same time.

“I could work it off?” he offers, because he’s got nothing else to give. Doesn’t have anything left to barter, and cannot borrow money from John (again), because he’s not yet home. “I’ll wash glasses, or sweep floors. Whatever your boss wants.”

“I am the boss,” August tells him, and of course he is, why wouldn’t he be. The other man looks him up and down, appraising, Robin thinks, and then he says, “I know you can toss back a drink - or twelve. But can you pour one?”

Robin nods, tells him, “Yes, of course. I’m shit with mixed drinks, but…”

August nods, tells him that’s fine. “One of my bartenders just quit, and I’m not looking forward to the thought of covering all her shifts. You pull beers, you pour shots, you wipe down the counters and you keep your fingers out of the till. If it’s even at the end of the night, I’ll even tip you out. Work through the weekend and we’re square. Deal?”

It’ll save the man more in wages than Robin owes, but he doesn’t care. It’s honest work – a fair bit better than scrubbing plates or wiping floors, and the prospect of _tips_ , of actual dollars with which to buy things like gas for the car, or a belated birthday present for Roland… He doesn’t dare think his luck might be turning around, but it’s a brief reprieve from the constant downward spiral of late.

“Yes, deal,” he tells August, and “ _Thank you._ ”

August jerks his thumb backward, and tells him, “You start now. Get to work.”

By closing time, Robin has learned how to pull a proper pint (his first few had a bit too much head, but he’s got the hang of it now), knows the ins and outs of the register, and has had a cursory lesson in mixing some of the simpler drinks. He drives home, spends the few dollars of tips August deigned to dole out tonight on putting a bit more gas in his car, and then collapses into bed.

 


	3. Chapter 3

“I just can’t shake the feeling that there’s something going on that I don’t know about.”

 

“Something like what? An affair?”

Regina pours her coffee, mixes in a dollop of half-and-half. It’s a luxury she tells herself she can afford - she doesn’t spend an hour running hills on the treadmill in her home office four nights a week just so she can grey down her dark roast with watery skim milk, or worse - the soy that Kathryn is currently emptying into her own mug.

It’s Monday morning, just past ten – time for their usual coffee break and weekend catch-up. There’s not much to share these days, not for Regina at least, but Kathryn is in the midst of what she keeps calling a “rough patch” in her marriage. Her husband David has been distant, moody, they’re “not connecting,” and so every Monday morning for the last three weeks, Regina has been treated to Kathryn’s anxious fretting over what it could mean, what she should do.

And since Kathryn is the best friend Regina has here at The Blanchard Group, she listens gamely, tries to be supportive, but honest.

“No, no,” Kathryn tells her, shaking her head, and sending her soft blonde waves bouncing. Her brow is pinched, her mouth tightened into a scowl. “Nothing like that. I just…” She sighs, glances down into her mug, and finishes, “I just wish he’d tell me what’s going on in that head of his.”

“Have you tried asking?” Regina asks with a quirk of her brow, lifting her own mug to her lips and leaving a berry-red lipstick print on the rim.

Kathryn gives her a look and mutters, “No, because that would be too logical and straightforward.” Regina smirks. “But enough about me and David, what about you? Anything exciting happen this weekend?”

Regina scoffs, shakes her head slightly, runs her thumb along the handle of her mug, and tells her, “Just a little friendly home invasion.”

Kathryn’s jaw falls open, her eyes going wide, a “What?!” forming on her lips just as their breakroom solitude is interrupted.

“It was nothing,” Regina dismisses quickly with a wave of her hand, offering a polite smile to their new arrival as he closes the gap between them and reaches up into the cupboard for a mug of his own, encroaching just a bit into her personal space. Regina shifts a few inches to the side to accommodate as she finishes with, “Just a neighbor who ended up in the wrong house by accident,” and “Good morning, Sidney.”

Sidney Glass has worked at Blanchard for three years less than Regina, but has still managed to overcome the pitfalls of his lack of seniority and get in good with the boss – a fact that would grate more on Regina and her eight years of hard work for the company if it weren’t for the fact that Sidney, well… He likes her. Quite a bit. Likes to talk to her (and he’s intelligent and cultured, well-read, so she doesn’t mind that so terribly much), likes to look at her (his gaze has just swept down from her face, quickly tracked the lines of her vest, her crisp white button-down, her well-tailored black slacks and high heels, and it’s not her favorite thing - the ogling he tries and fails not to be obvious about - but he never makes the inappropriate comments that Leo occasionally lets slip, so she’ll allow it), but most of all, he likes to work with her. Likes her ideas, likes the way her mind works, likes the way she strategizes the best way to turn every client toward their favor.

Which means when he decides to go after the big fish - like the cosmetics company behind True Love’s Kiss perfume and their many, many lucrative ad dollars - he’s more than happy to request her presence on his team and share his commissions. Would she rather get the account on merit and seniority? Yes, of course, but it’s a competitive company, and she’ll take a break wherever she can get it.

So she smiles at Sidney, and doesn’t comment on the way he checks her out, and when he meets her gaze and says his hello to her (ignores Kathryn completely) before asking about this misplaced neighbor incident, she is perfectly polite in the way she downplays the subject.

“It was nothing, really. Hardly worth mentioning.”

Sometimes honey does really draw more flies than vinegar.

“As long as you’re safe,” Sidney says to her, full of kind concern.

Before she can assure him that she is, of course she is, they’re interrupted.

“If you three are done chatting like little old ladies, there’s a meeting we’re all supposed to be headed to.”

_Speaking of vinegar…_ , Regina thinks, her gaze swinging toward the break room door where Mallory Fischer has just poked her head in to berate them all for their imaginary sloth. Mal is sharp - the only woman at the company with more years than Regina, and she didn’t get them by being a wallflower. She is bold, sassy, with a penchant for vampy dark colors even in the gauzy days of spring, long blonde hair that is usually pulled back (sometimes a sleek pony, but today a tight bun). They’ve been in friendly (is it friendly? Regina isn’t always sure) competition since the day Regina arrived here, and if she’s honest with herself (and Regina likes to think she is), she owes quite a bit of her ruthless determination and success to following Mal’s example.

“We’re on our way,” Kathryn tells her, a hint of frost in her usually kind voice (the competition between Mal and Kathryn is decidedly not friendly).

“Good.”

Mal turns to walk away and as she does, Regina can see that the dress she’s wearing today (simple, solid black, from boat-neck to knees) is nearly backless, revealing the head of the massive dragon tattoo that adorns her back, a lick of flame curling up her spine.

  
Regina rolls her eyes, and mutters something about Mal’s flair for the dramatics before heading for the door after her.

**.::.**

“You did _what?_ ” John asks him, and Robin lets out a heavy sigh as he loads his dirty clothes into the washer.

“You heard me the first time,” he grumbles, because he had, damnit, and Robin is loathe to repeat it.

“You _broke into_ that poor woman’s home?” John’s eyebrows are nearly to his hairline, his thick arms crossed over his chest. This is clearly not the news he was expecting to come home to, and why in the world would it be? It’s absolutely ridiculous, what Robin has done.

“Yes, John, yes, I did,” Robin confirms, giving Tuck a gentle shove when he tries to worm his way into the already tight space. “Although I’d hardly call her a ‘poor woman.’ She’s no wilting flower, that one.”

“That’s no excu–”

“Damnit, John, I know it’s no excuse,” Robin exclaims, frustrated and tired, and dizzy from spending the first part of his day attempting to memorize the different drink recipes he’d been staring at on the Internet since he woke at noon. “I’m a mess, alright. I know it. I missed my son’s birthday because his mother doesn’t think I’m fit to parent him, couldn’t even get him a gift because I’ve barely a cent to my name, I broke into a woman’s home in the dead of night, heaved my guts up in her guest bathroom and then had to slink out of the place in front of her son–”

“Jesus, Henry saw you like that?”

“Then had to _go back there_ and ask for keys to get into my own home -- no, not mine, _yours_ , because I’ve been good and well kicked out of mine, haven’t I? Had to go get your keys from her because mine were still back at the sodding bar where they’d been taken off me when I was cut off for being a horrible, stinking drunk. So yes, John, yes, I know. There’s no excuse for the way I’ve been of late, and if you think I’m not mortified down to my very toes, well…” He loses steam then, lets out a heavy exhale and shuts the washer door with a bang, stowing away the laundry soap with hands that shake with frustration and self-loathing. He finishes lamely, “...you’d be wrong.”

“Robin, I love you like a brother, and you can stay here as long as you need, but you have to get yourself together.”

“I know.”

“I mean it–”

“I _know_ , John,” Robin insists again, looking at the man and gentling his voice. “I know. And I’m going to try – I _am_ trying. Starting now, starting yesterday.”

“Starting with a job, maybe?” John suggests, but he does it with a sort of guilty grimace, like he doesn’t want to prod, but perhaps the charity of floating Robin for the last near-month isn’t something he’d like to sustain.

Robin leans against the washer and frowns. “I’m working down at the Rabbit Hole this week,” he admits, and John’s face brightens slightly, his brow lifting with interest. Robin holds up a hand and tells him, “For free. To…” He sighs. “To pay off my tab from the other night, but the bar owner said he’ll split tips, so that’s something at least, and I’m hoping that if I can do a good job, perhaps he’ll throw something my way. Even if it’s just a shift now and then when they’re short. If not…” He shakes his head, drops his palms to grip at the front edge of the washer and concedes, “I’ll start looking for work in earnest next week.”

“Good,” John nods and then he asks, “Do I need to apologize to Regina?”

“No. I did that already, quite a few times.” Robin tightens his grip against the cool metal, releases it. “The boy wants to come play with the dog,” he tells him. “She said he can’t unless you’re home.” He looks at John, grimaces, and states the obvious: “I’m afraid I left her with a rather poor impression of me.”

John snorts a laugh at that, shaking his head and clapping Robin on the back. Ah, there he is, the John Robin is used to. The friendly oaf of a man who buoys his spirits like no other friend he’s had.

“I can’t imagine why,” John taunts him, and then he’s dropping his hand and heading into the kitchen, calling backward, “Do you have time for a meal before your indentured servitude? I could order pizza.”

He does, but barely. It’s half three already, and he’s due to the bar to start work at half four (probably should have thought of that before he started his washing, but John is home now to switch the loads, he supposes) and still needs to shower and dress and make himself presentable for the public.

But a bit of pizza does sound good, and his stomach is empty, rumbling, and so he agrees and follows after John.

.::.

The rest of the week goes better for Robin - remarkably well, in fact. It turns out that when he’s sober, and cleaned up, and highly motivated, he makes quite a good bartender. By Wednesday night, August has let him graduate from pulling beers and pouring simple drinks (who cannot handle a rum and Coke, after all?) to the more complicated shots and cocktails. Some of them, anyhow – the ones he’s managed to memorize over the past few days.

Not only that, but Robin is good-looking and friendly, has his own kind barman smile, which means he brings in good tips, from the female clients in particular. And his till is always, always spot on (he’s decent at math, but really it’s the promise of being tipped out for accuracy, the idea that he might be able to buy something for Roland’s birthday after all, or be the one to pay for pizza with John this weekend that makes him extra cautious with his bills).

August is impressed, and on Saturday night (Sunday morning, really) as they clean up and close up, he looks at Robin and tells him as much. “I have to admit, when you walked in here on Sunday night, I thought this proposition might turn out to be a disaster, but you’ve… you’ve done really well.”

Robin smiles, cannot help himself. It’s the first thing he feels as if he’s done well in quite some time. He turns his face down, focuses on the bottles he’s straightening on the shelf behind them, and says his thank you.

After a moment, August speaks again. A statement, not a question: “You really want this job, don’t you.”

Robin pauses, looks up. August is leaning against the bar, arms crossed, face placid. A white envelope grasped loosely in one hand.

“I do,” Robin admits. “It’s decent money, and I like talking to people. And I really, really need work of some kind. If you’d be willing to hire me in earnest, I’d be more than happy to take the position.”

“You’d be the new guy,” August warns him. “You’d get all the shifts nobody wants. Ruby has been begging to swap out of her Monday and Tuesday nights–”

“I’ll take anything,” Robin tells him, cutting him off with a shake of his head. “If you’re offering actual paid work, I will take anything. Just tell me when to be here, and I will be.”

August nods slowly, studies Robin some more. “Don’t fuck up. You fuck up, you’re gone.”

Robin feels a flood of relief - because the threat of being gone means that first he gets to be hired, and thank Christ for that.

“I won’t,” he swears.

“Then I’ll see you Monday afternoon,” August tells him, and Robin frowns at that. He’s supposed to be back tonight, had promised August every day this week, even the ones he had coverage for (had spent Thursday night refilling water glasses and bussing tables and sweeping floors while Ruby worked the bar).

“Monday?” he questions, and August nods, holds out that envelope he’d been holding. “You work here now; you get a day off.”

Robin takes the envelope and lifts the flap; it’s flush with cash -- his tips, he thinks, but then he sees one end stacked with larger bills. Far more than he’d expected. His forehead wrinkles, brows rising. “We made this much tonight?”

“No. That’s your tips for the night, plus your shift pay for the last week – minus that bottle you drank on Saturday night.”

Robin blinks, stares at the cash. He’s holding a week’s pay in his hand. A week’s pay he never expected to be getting.

“We’ll do your paperwork on Monday, and you’ll start getting actual checks after that, but I figure if you’re working here, you’re working here. And I’ve gotten the impression you could use the money.”

“Yes,” Robin tells him, a bit shocked and still trying to recover. “Yes, thank you.” He looks at August then, tells him with conviction he desperately hopes he can live up to. “You won’t regret this.”

“I hope not,” August mutters, as he turns to finish closing everything up.

Robin leaves that night with a lightness he hasn’t felt in weeks. No, in months. Not since that sodding layoff, since the day he’d had to come home from work and tell Marian he wasn’t going to be going back.

Finally, for the first time in months, he has a _job_.

He has an envelope full of actual money, enough to do more than top off his gas tank, and he prioritizes its use as he drives home: a gift for Roland, first thing; a load of groceries for himself and John after that; and if he can spare a bit more, perhaps a proper apology is owed to a certain neighbor.

  


**.::.**

  


Regina’s week doesn’t go so spectacularly.

Oh sure, she’s officially on the True Love’s Kiss account with Sidney, and it’s looking to be lucrative as hell - for which she’s grateful. But there had been Henry’s bout of the twenty-four hour stomach flu on Wednesday, and her own queasy version of it all day Friday. She’s fairly certain she’ll never eat another everything bagel with scallion cream cheese again - probably shouldn’t have had it in the first place, to be honest. Too many carbs. Her mother would call its sudden reappearance into the company toilets both a karmic punishment and a gift she ought to appreciate - but then, she’s not Cora, and much like her daily splash of half-and-half, the office’s Friday morning bagel ritual is something Regina has always tried to tell herself she’s allowed, even earned.

So there had been that, and then there had been the phone call from said mother on Saturday afternoon.

“Regina, dear,” Cora had said to her, in that way that she does, warm and affectionate and so often a precursor to words that cut like knives. This time, it hadn’t been veiled insults, but bold guilt-tripping instead. “We never see you. Your father and I were thinking that maybe we should come by. I know how proud you always say you are of that little house you have.”

Every now and then (more often than she ought to), Regina edits Cora’s words on the fly, reimagines them the way they ought to be said - if they were kinder, or more honest. _Regina, dear, we miss you. Why don’t we come over and see the home you’re so proud of. But in all honesty, Regina, I’ve run out of things to badger you about. Let me lower myself to come pick at some new aspect of the decor you’ve used to try to mask the utter hovel you’re living in and claim to like._

But it’s Mother, and she doesn’t take no for an answer. And it’s Daddy, and she really does miss him. So she’d agreed, of course she had, and now she has to spend the next week planning a meal that is healthy but delicious, classy but easy enough to make. And she’ll have to clean the place top to bottom, and she should probably buy some flowers (tulips, but not lilies; or roses – but red, not the white Regina herself has been fond of lately). Maybe she’ll order a few bouquets, one for the side table in the living room, one for the dining table, a small clutch of flowers for the downstairs powder room... And she should clean out the old magazines on the shelf under the coffee table - her mother will comment on anything even remotely out of season.

This is what she’s fretting over on Sunday night – what has her tapping a pen against her lip as she scribbles a to-do list of tasks to accomplish over the next week – when the doorbell rings.

Regina frowns, sets aside her pad and pen and walks the handful of feet to the doorway.

To say she’s surprised at the visitor on the other side of the door is an understatement: she’d become increasingly convinced she’d never see Robin or her travel mug ever again.

But there he is, standing in the glow of her porch light, a bouquet of flowers in one hand - stargazer lilies, she has to give him points for originality, even if they do look a little past their prime, like they won’t make it more than a day or two before they wilt - and a large gift bag in the other.

Regina leans slightly into the doorway, filling the entire gap as she lifts one brow in derisive question. “Gifts and flowers?”

“Flowers to apologize for my inexcusably atrocious behavior a week ago,” he explains, and oh, he’s a far cry from rumpled and whiskey-bathed tonight. He’s bright-eyed, his beard neatly trimmed, smiling softly at her, dimples winking, and she remembers again why she’d thought he was so attractive before. “And your mug,” he adds, lifting his other hand slightly.

He looks appropriately contrite, and decides she rather likes that he gave her a few days before he came sniffing around like a scolded puppy, so she softens just a little, and admits, “The breaking in was inexcusable, the throwing up was probably unavoidable considering just how much you seemed to have had to drink, but your behavior _otherwise_ was… not atrocious. For a drunken burglar you were pretty polite.”

He tilts his head a little, his brow furrowing curiously. He’s trying to read her, and she’s not giving much away.

But his polite smile widens into something a little bit warmer and she feels her cheeks tug up in answer before she can help it, looking quickly away, down, forcing her face into something more serious again.

She catches sight of the gift bag as she does and points out, “That’s awfully big for a travel mug.”

It’s several times too large, and there’s something in it, a box bulging the sides a bit.

His smile goes sheepish again and he holds the bag out to her, tells her, “There’s also a home security system, to keep tossers like me from breaking in unnoticed again. It’s secondhand and nothing fancy, but it’ll wake you if need be.”

Regina finds herself oddly touched by the gesture, reaching out a tentative hand to take the bag from him. Truth be told, his little stunt has had her rattled. She’s been checking and double checking the locks on every window and door at night, has stiffened slightly at some of the louder shifts and creaks of the old house. Has been thinking of getting something just like this, for that very reason.

“I can install it for you,” he offers. “I used to do it for a living, with the fancier models. I figure it’s the least I can I do.”

She should tell him no, has absolutely no reason to invite him into her home again (surely, the thing comes with an instruction manual, and Regina is hardly the type of doe-eyed damsel who needs a man to rescue her from the woeful confusion of the mysterious world of electronics). But it seems like a fit form of penance for his crimes against her, and frankly, if she shuts the door on him now, she’ll just end up back in that chair, fretting over dinner.

 

So against her better judgement (and maybe just a little bit because those hopeful blue eyes are _doing things_ to her insides), she smiles, and nods, and steps back to let him in out of the cold.


	4. Chapter 4

Robin had approached 5802 Mifflin Street with a feeling he could only describe as hopeful dread. He hadn’t been terribly optimistic that he would meet a warm reception, even with his sad bouquet and second-hand gift. So to have earned what he thinks is an honest, albeit slight, smile and an invitation back into her home seems quite an accomplishment.

 

But now that he’s inside, she’s frowning slightly, setting down the sack with the security system in it and reaching for the flowers.

 

“Let me get those in some water,” she tells him as he passes the blooms into her grasp. “You just… wait here.”

 

Robin nods and stuffs his hands into his pockets now that they’re free, taking her brief absence to get a good look at her house now he’s not blearily hungover.

 

The inside of her home is lovely. All dark, restored hardwoods and white-painted wainscoting. The rest of the walls are in deep, rich hues. Dark, dusky blues in the living room, and soothing kelly greens in the entry hall and headed up the stairs. There’s a table right next to the door with her keys resting upon it, and two neat stacks of mail (her name behind the plastic window of an envelope atop one, her return address on the pale blue greeting card that tops the other). Above that is a small mirror that shows his own reflection, and beyond it the hall that runs beside the stairway and clear to the back of the house. He knows the layout of her place - it’s the same as his own with John, after all, and he wonders what she uses that back room for. The one beyond the stairs, near to the rear door. For him and John, it’s a bit of a rubbish collector, but he can’t imagine Regina has such a thing in her immaculately clean home.

 

Wandering into the living room, he takes in the austere sense of design - modern pieces of furniture in sleek grey upholstery, white vases spilling with flowers, a small table flanked by two arm chairs that seem much more traditional in style, something almost throne-like about them, but they’ve clearly been restored and reupholstered, with the end result the same neutral modern flair. There’s an upright piano along one wall, and a fireplace nearby to it (gas, he guesses, as the same wall in his own place is decked out with IKEA furniture and a large television with not a chimney to be found). On the wall above, a triptych of black and white photos of horses.  On the mantel, a neat arrangement of photos of her boy. As a chubby-cheeked babe all the way to his most recent school photo. And on the end, a much younger Regina, he thinks, on a boat somewhere, perhaps a sailboat, bright sun on her face and an even brighter smile. Her hair had been longer then, and whipped about by the wind, blowing into her face, but she’s still stunningly beautiful. It’s no surprise that the man in the photo with her, one with an easy smile and dark hair, light eyes, looks absolutely besotted with the woman he has his arms wrapped around.

 

He doesn’t get much further into his casual perusal before Regina is walking back into the room, clutching another white vase filled with the lilies he’d brought. He thinks he sees her hesitate as she walks toward him, but he can’t be certain.

 

“Thank you for these,” she tells him, her tone cool and even as she sets the flowers on the very center of the coffee table. She’s not quite made up her mind about him yet, he can tell. And fair enough - her experience with him so far has been rather dismal.

 

“Is this your boy’s father?” he asks, pointing to the photo he’s been looking at.

 

Her hands flutter, rising as if they want to cross but not quite making it there, one hand hovering near her belly while the other drops back to her side. Then she simply tells him, “Yes.”

 

“I can see the resemblance,” he murmurs. “There’s only one photo of him? Must be half a dozen here of your boy.”

 

“He died,” she tells him shortly, and Robin cringes internally. He should’ve thought of that before he opened his gob and stuck his boot in it. No wonder her expression has been so pinched since she returned to the room and caught him looking at the photo.

 

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Robin tells her sincerely, because he cannot imagine the deep pain of a permanent loss of someone like that, a lover, a parent to your child.

 

“It’s alright. It was a long time ago.” She reaches for the photo, pulls it down and studies it as if she hasn’t paid it much mind in a while. Robin watches her fingertip trace down the edge of the frame.

 

“How old was -- Henry, is it?” He remembers the boy introducing himself during his absolute misery of a hangover, but he can’t be certain he’d heard anything properly through the pulsing pain in his skull.

 

“Yes, Henry,” she says with a small smile, but one tight with old pain. A long time ago, perhaps, but she still clearly feels the loss of this man keenly. “He wasn’t born yet when Daniel passed. He, uh… He never got to meet him.” How awful, the thinks, trying to imagine for a moment raising Roland without him ever having known Marian, and how heart-wrenching it would be. Tries to imagine what it would be like to know a child was coming and to be all alone, to wake by yourself for all those early sleepless nights, to change every diaper on your own, to have no one to commiserate with about the less than glamorous parts of child-rearing. But then, he doesn’t know that she was alone, now does he? He doesn’t know her at all. He’s just here because he’s made a colossal ass of himself, and a mess of his life, and making amends with Regina Mills is another step on his path toward something that resembles his normal life. The life he wants to get back. This isn’t a social call, and they’re not friends.

 

As such, he’s unsurprised when she clears her throat, changes the subject. “So, how long is it going to take to install this thing?”

 

**.::.**

 

He’s thrown her off-balance, and not for the first time.

 

Regina had disappeared into the kitchen for a whole two minutes - had left him in the foyer and returned to find him picking at deep wounds. Daniel. She’s used to people asking, to them wondering about Henry’s father, but being used to it doesn’t do much to dull the ache of the chasm left behind in the wake of her fiancé’s death. It’s been years - ten and change - since the car accident, but she still misses him. Still wonders, often, how life might be different if it had been the three of them instead of the two of them. The way it was supposed to be, the way they’d planned (they hadn’t planned on Henry, but he had been a welcome surprise - a hiccup at that early stage of her career, but they would manage). They’d still be in Boston, she thinks. She’d be farther from the clutches of her mother, and would not be the one solely responsible for things like parent-teacher conferences, and making sure that Henry is upstairs in his room like he is right now, nose dutifully in a book so he can earn another check on his Daily Reading Chart.

 

And maybe she wouldn’t be the one standing here overseeing the security of their home, might be reading a book herself or running on her treadmill while Daniel dealt with the drunk who’d broken in a week ago and come to pay penance.

 

“A bit,” he tells her with a mild shrug. “It’s a wireless system, so there are sensors for the doors, the windows, some motion sensors to place around. You’ll have to decide where you want the control panel - near one of the doors somewhere, so you can disarm it quickly when you arrive home.”

 

Regina nods, sets the picture of herself and Daniel back on the mantel, and says, “Henry always comes in the front when he gets home from school; it should probably go there.”

 

“Alright,” Robin agrees. “We’ll sensor both doors, and I’d suggest the main floor windows. Certainly the side one and the back room - they’re the easiest to access from outside. A motion sensor could do here in the living room, and one in the kitchen. It’s not terribly likely that someone would be able to get into the house from the upstairs - they’d have to climb the porch and risk being spotted - more than likely with that streetlamp out front and Granny Lucas nosing around across the way-” (Regina chuckles. Granny Lucas is a kind, older lady, if a bit gruff, and she’s apparently appointed herself as the local neighborhood watch now that she’s retired and spending more time at home. Regina thinks she just likes to entertain herself with any sordid details of the comings and goings of their little neighborhood.) “-or somehow scale sheer brick to get in the sides. No point to that when there are main floor windows that are much easier to get into. But you can sensor those rooms as well if it makes you feel more comfortable - there’s enough there to do it.”

 

He sounds… smart, she thinks. Knowledgeable. Intelligent. She wonders what he’s like when he’s not drunk and irresponsible. What this Robin is like. The one who is moving back into her foyer and pulling the security system from the gift bag. The one who smells like soap and cologne instead of whiskey and vomit, who is shrugging out of his coat (hanging it on the end of her banister instead of the coat hooks just a few feet away) to reveal a navy blue henley and jeans, neither rumpled from a night of sleep on her sofa.

 

He glances over at her to ask if it’s alright to put the control panel just there on the wall to the right of the window, and as she tells him yes, that’s fine, she has the absent thought that the blue of his shirt brings out the blue of his eyes.

 

She blinks.

 

_Snap out of it, Regina_ , she thinks. However attractive he may be (those dimples, God, they’re flashing at her as he gives her a smile), he’s still a loser. Not someone worth her time. Not someone she should allow herself to be at all _attracted_ to.

 

But then she reminds herself that there’s no harm in looking… Just looking. For purely aesthetic enjoyment. She has no intention of pursuing him, but she could certainly… appreciate him. So as he bends to open the box at his feet, she allows herself a moment to admire the shape of his bicep, the line of his jaw, his--shit, he’s talking to her.

 

Regina lifts her brows and asks, “Hmm?”

 

**.::.**

 

Robin turns his head to look at her for moment, prompted by her distracted query, and he’s struck for a moment by just how beautiful she is. It’s a Sunday, not a workday for any normal person, and he doesn’t imagine it was one for her, but she still looks sleek and polished. She’s in jeans, a snug dark wash, and a forest green button-down shirt that must be silk. Her face is perfectly painted, berry lips and long lashes, and brows he’s sure are perfectly waxed and shaped, presently raised in slight confusion. She’d completely missed what he just said to her.

 

Tuning him out already. Lovely. This should be a fun evening.

 

Still, she’s… God, stunning. He shouldn’t think like that, not if he intends to work things out with Marian - and he does intend to. He intends to put right everything he’d let be torn asunder in the last few months, but right now, in this moment, with the rich scent of her perfume hovering around like a cloud and her perfectly manicured fingers lifting to fiddle with the modest pendant that hangs around her neck, he takes a moment to appreciate her beauty.

 

And then he repeats what he’d said to her moments before: “I said you have a lovely home.”

 

She frowns, brow furrowing slightly. “You saw it a week ago.”

 

“Well, I wasn’t in much of a fit state to really take it all in then,” he admits with a guilty grimace, and her frown melts, transforms into a smirk - a bit on the judgy side, he thinks, but a smirk nonetheless.

 

“No, I suppose you weren’t,” she drawls, and then she’s shaking her head, disturbing the dark locks that just graze her shoulders. “Tell me,” she begins, crossing her arms and leaning against the banister, crossing one bare foot over the other (her toes are painted the same green as her shirt, and he finds he’s not surprised in the least to find her so ridiculously coordinated. Oh what it must be like to have one’s life in such ruthless order that there’s time to match your polish to your clothes every day). “What exactly is it that inspires a man to drink so much he commits an accidental B-and-E?”

 

Robin stills for a moment, then exhales. He supposes he should have seen that question coming. But how in the world can he answer it?

 

**.::.**

 

Maybe she shouldn’t have asked, Regina thinks mildly, as she watches his shoulders deflate, watches him meticulously unpack pieces from the box for a few moments in silence.

 

When he finally confesses the reason, she almost feels bad for bringing it up: “It was my son’s birthday, and I didn’t get to see him.” His voice is quiet. Low. She thinks it might be  self-loathing she hears there, or maybe shame. Two emotions she’s not entirely unfamiliar with. “I haven’t seen him for several weeks, actually. So I threw myself a right pity party over it. Open bar.”

 

“You have a son?” she asks, because she wouldn’t have guessed that. Hasn’t seen any evidence of it in the weeks he’s lived here, but then he did just say he hasn’t been able to see him. She wonders what he did, wonders why.

 

“I do,” he nods, looking up at her with a smile and then standing, moving toward her and pointing to the coat behind her back with a rise of his brows that’s meant to ask permission to reach for it. Regina stands fully and steps to the side, lets him dig around in his pocket until he unearths his cell phone. He swipes his thumb across it several times and then turns it toward her to reveal a picture of him with a toddler, a little boy maybe two or three, she guesses, with a riot of loose, dark curls on his head and dimples to match his daddy’s. Regina’s grin is instant and insuppressible. “That’s Roland.”

 

She reaches for the phone on impulse, their fingers brushing (his cool against the warmth of hers) as she cradles it in her hands and draws it away, closer to her view. “He’s going to be a heartbreaker,” she murmurs, chuckling softly.

 

“Oh, he already is,” Robin assures her, smiling now (he has a nice smile, wide and friendly, straight white teeth - why is she even noticing this?). “There’s two little girls in his daycare who fight over him.”

 

She hands the phone back over and he tucks it away again, turns back to his task – or means to, but then she asks, “So, what did you do wrong?”

 

He pauses, turns to look at her with a frown. “Pardon?”

 

“You haven’t seen him in weeks,” she reminds. “Weren’t allowed to see him on his birthday. She’s pissed at you.”

 

It’s a safe assumption to make - that if he’s been cut off from his son, if he’s living here with a friend, he’s done something to royally incense the mother of his child.

 

And he proves her right when he admits, “Yes. Yes, she is.”

 

He bends back to the box, then, finally, and Regina thinks maybe she shouldn’t pry, but what else are they going to talk about? Books? Current events? Not likely.

 

“So. What did you do?”

 

She watches his shoulders expand and then deflate, and then he’s glancing up at her quickly and then back down before admitting, “I broke the law.”

 

 

 

That’s...

 

Regina had relaxed back into her former position against the banister, but she straightens now, stiffens. So he’s not just a drunken idiot, he’s also a criminal.

 

Maybe she shouldn’t have let him in here again after all.

 

**.::.**

 

It had been a calculated risk, making that admission.

 

He’s not a citizen, is just here on his green card, could easily be sent back and never see his child unless Marian deigned to bring Roland across the pond for a visit. But then, she’d have to have some sort of evidence of what he’s done, more than just a confession he’s broken the law, so he figures he’s safe with what he said.

 

He doesn’t like this line of questioning though - wouldn’t like it from anyone, as it drags up mountains of shame and guilt and self-loathing, but dislikes it especially from her, considering her family is the one he committed said crime against.

 

But she doesn’t know that. They don’t know that.

 

So he just keeps his head down. He’s not sure he wants to see her reaction. He’s not sure he should have said anything in the first place. He’s not sure, now, that he should even be here. That he should ever have come back here. That he should ever speak to her again.

 

But he’s promised to install this security system, and install it he shall - so she’ll be safe. (There’s a great irony in there somewhere, he thinks - that he’s somehow putting himself in charge of her safety despite using his access and expertise to override a system not so different from this one and burglarize her parents. Christ, what is he even doing here?)

  
“Was it a violent crime?”

 

Her voice disrupts his self-scolding, carefully cool and controlled.

 

Robin looks up at her then, scowling slightly as he assures her, “No. No, it wasn’t that.”

 

She nods slowly, her lips pursed. Then gives a follow-up: “Did anyone get hurt?”

 

“No,” he tells her, makes sure to meet her eyes and hopes she can see the honesty in his. He may be a criminal, he may have done something that blew his whole life apart, but he doesn’t think he’s a dangerous man. Doesn’t want her to think so either. The last thing he wants is for her to feel threatened in her own home. By him. Again.

 

“Alright then,” she murmurs, taking in a deep breath and then letting it out. “I don’t think I want to know.”

 

He nods, and looks back to his work, sorting out the sensors for the various rooms. Her not knowing is fine by him. Excellent, in fact.

 

But something has shifted in the room. There’s a tension in the air. A heaviness. A weight.

 

Silence stretches between them for several long minutes, thick and suffocating. He moves to attach the sensor to the front door and she stays where she is near the stairs. Unmoving. Just watching. He can practically feel her gaze on him. Can only imagine her thoughts.

 

What had he done?

 

That’s what she’s probably thinking. She may say she doesn’t want to know, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t wondering. Coming up with a million different scenarios, each worse than the one before. Perhaps he’s a drug dealer, someone who will bring crime and violence to her own backyard. Or maybe he’d been the one who vandalised the park several weeks back, had spraypainted rude things all over the children’s playground. Maybe shoplifted all their Christmas toys or kicked a mall Santa in a fit of holiday-induced rage, or blackmailed a public official, or engaged in filthy deeds with a seedy prostitute. There’s all manner of things she could assume of him, things that blacken his character even beyond what he’s actually done, and he finds suddenly that he wants to tell her.

 

Not all the details, certainly, but enough that the stream of dastardly deeds he’s coming up with aren’t repeated in her own head.

 

“We were short on money,” he tells her, breaking the ages of dead air between them. “Rent was due, and our car needed a new transmission, and I’d had a friend who’d been in dire straits several weeks before, so I’d lent him nearly our entire savings. I’d been working then, and I thought I’d have time to make the money back before the holidays, but I got laid off right after Halloween. No more money coming in, only her money to make ends meet. And of course, she hadn’t realized I’d given away all we had, and I… I didn’t want her to find out.”

 

“You needed to recoup your loss,” she surmises, and Robin nods.

 

“We were already a month late on the rent - I’d not sent the last check because we hadn’t the money, and then…” He exhales heavily, shakes his head. “I did a foolish thing. A desperate thing. But the rent got paid to current, and the car got itself fixed, and my son had presents under the tree at Christmas.”

 

“But she found out.”

 

“Yes,” Robin sighs, heading back for the next sensor, and affixing it to the very window he’d used to break in to this home. “She found out, and she was none too pleased. Said she didn’t want me around our son, that I wasn’t the man she knew. Kicked me out, and so I’ve been here. With John.”

 

Regina’s voice is quiet and snide as she mutters, “Can’t say I blame her…” and Robin can’t help the sharp look he gives her. “You lied to her. You stole from her. You broke the–”

 

“I did not steal from her,” Robin clarifies, and he knows even before she says _You took money from your bank accounts without telling her_ that that’s what her argument will be. Because he’s had this argument already, many times, with Marian.  “Money I intended to pay back.”

 

“But you didn’t.”

 

“I was trying to help a friend.”

 

“As altruistic as that may be, you still broke her trust.”

 

“I did it for my family,” he tells her, the same thing he’s been telling Marian, the thing he’s been trying to make her see. That yes, he broke the law. Yes, he did wrong. But he did it for _them_. He did it to _help them_. He did it to _take care of things_. And yes. Yes, maybe there were other solutions, smarter solutions, solutions that would have maybe involved a bit less pride but would have in the end left him with infinitely more self-worth than he has now, but… well, it’s done. It’s done now, and he cannot undo it, and why can she not just _see_ that he did it for a good reason? Why can’t she just see that, and try to move on from all this.

 

But she cannot, and it seems neither can Regina. She’s still staring at him with those crossed arms and an arched brow and a smile he thinks might qualify as haughty. Like she’s enjoying his misery, like she thinks he deserves it.

 

“Well, not everyone wants the law broken for them,” she tells him, and Christ, she and Marian should just start a little club, should go to lunch and become fast friends, they’ve so bloody much in common, the two of them, it seems. “I wouldn’t.”

 

“Nobody got hurt,” he mutters, and she points out that it sounds like a few people did. He’s here, after all, and his wife is wherever she is. “We’re not married,” he mutters. “We’ve a child, and we’re together, but… we’ve never married. And anyway, it seemed… more pertinent to take care of my family than it did to hold the law in utmost regard. Sometimes one has to take care of the people they love. By whatever means necessary.”

 

“Good intentions don’t justify taking the law into your own hands, Robin.”

 

He lets out a little growl of frustration as he heads back to grab the next sensor, and points out a bit testily, "I didn't off someone, Regina. It was nothing like that."

 

“Still,” she dismisses. “You should have just told her the truth.”

 

“Believe it or not I have figured that out,” he replies sardonically. “The absolute shit my well-intentioned decisions have left my life in has been quite insightful in that way.” He takes a breath, then asks, “Now would you prefer the window sensors for the living room, or the motion sensors?”

 

**.::.**

 

She should probably give him a break.

 

He has a point - it seems he’s more than paid for his crimes, and it’s not her place to make him suffer anyway. Whatever he did doesn’t affect her in the slightest.

 

So she drops the subject (even though she finds she rather enjoys the way his jaw clenches when he’s annoyed), and asks him, “What’s the difference?”

 

“Well, they’re easily accessible windows,” he explains, “A more likely point of entry. The motion sensors would cover the room as a whole if you’d rather not put a sensor on each window - we can just put a single one there - but if you plan on arming the motion sensors at night, you’re not going to want to do a lot of midnight roaming down here.”

 

She’s not one for midnight snacking, and Henry is an excellent sleeper… And while the sensors themselves aren’t terribly obtrusive, she does have her parents coming to visit in a week, and she can just hear Cora now. _What are these ugly little things, Regina?_ and _Why on earth do you need such extensive security in a neighborhood you keep insisting is perfectly safe for you and Henry?_

 

That settles it.

 

“We have a bathroom upstairs,” she says. “I can’t think of anything we’d need down here at midnight. Let’s do the motion sensor.”

 

He grabs the necessary sensor and tools and heads for the living room, and Regina follows.

 

“I’ll put it just here,” he tells her, pointing to the corner to the left of the windows, the little spit of wall that separates the living room from the foyer. That way you may actually be alright walking that hallway in the night if you need the kitchen.”

 

Regina tells him that sounds perfect, and sits herself on the piano bench. Something about lounging in her armchair while he works seems… off. Too much like she’s observing the help instead of chatting cordially while she works (she’s not really doing that, though, is she? More like keeping an eye on him while he secures her home. Needling him about his failures).

 

He glances her way, then asks, “Do you play?”

 

“My mother was insistent I learn when I was younger,” she tells him. “Years upon years of lessons and recitals. I hated it then, but… In the end, I was glad I’d learned.” She runs her fingers along the keys - doesn’t press down, just grazes them over the white surface. “This is for Henry. I wanted him to learn an instrument, but he hasn’t shown much interest, and I don’t want to… be her. I don’t want to push. So for now, it’s just a great place to rest a few knickknacks.”

 

“You should play something,” he encourages, turning back to his work, but she doesn’t have to see him to hear the smile in his voice. “Give us a little background music.”

 

Regina scoffs a little, shakes her head. “I don’t think so. I’ve had enough Chopin and Mendelssohn for a lifetime.”

 

“Not that,” he chuckles. “What do you play when Henry’s not home? When you’re alone.”

 

Regina lifts a brow, despite the fact his back is to her.

 

“What makes you think I do that?”

 

“It's not dusty,” he points out, and Regina counters that nothing in her house is dusty. He shoots her a grin, then shrugs, and continues, “The fallboard is up. And you said Henry doesn't play. Plus, there are no beginners books propped up anywhere.”

 

“You really think I’d leave those just lying around?” she challenges, not sure just why she’s fighting him on this. He’s right, she does play from time to time, when she’s alone or the house is quiet. But that’s none of his business, and she hates to think she’s so transparent.

 

“Fair point,” he smirks. “But I don't think you'd risk dust gathering under the keys. You’d take better care of your instrument than that.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Why what?”

 

“Why should I play?” she asks, using a different tactic.

 

Robin shrugs again, and simply tells her, “Because it’s music. Because it’s… transformative. Because even though you say you hated playing when you were young, you still play now. Maybe not Chopin or Mendelssohn, but perhaps… Wainwright or Bareilles?”

 

Regina laughs softly, because yes, she could play either. That he guesses that, though, has her shifting a little uncomfortably.

 

“Music is worth playing, Regina, simply by the fact of it being music. It’s the thing that reaches into people’s very souls, it’s the thing people remember when they don't even remember their own names anymore. People can lose themselves completely, to old age or illness, but they remember the music. Turn on something they once loved, and they remember.”

 

It’s not something she’d expect him to say. Not the man who was sawing logs on her sofa a week ago, and perhaps not even the man who is currently standing in her living room hooking up a wireless security system. She’d expect it from someone else - from an anthropologist or a musician. But not a criminal, not a drunkard. And she wonders then if maybe she’s misjudged him. If there’s more to him that what she knows (of course there is, she barely knows him, but for the first time since a week ago, she find she wants to know _more_ ).

 

She starts with an assumption: “You play.”

 

He’s finished with his task, and so he turns, rests his forearms on the back of one of the armchairs, leaning forward slightly and nodding. “I do. Not piano, really. A bit. I can scratch something out with sheet music and patience and a lot of practice. But guitar, I play. Well, played.” His gaze ducks down to his hands as he admits, “I was in a band for quite a while with some of my mates. We did alright - steady enough gigs, but no real success. I loved it, though. The connection with the audience, the music itself… But it’s been quite some time since then.”

 

He did love it, she can see it written all over him. A sort of tense sadness, a dreary nostalgia as he talks.

 

“Why'd you quit?” she asks, tilting her head curiously.

 

“The band broke up, I had a son to take care of. Bills to pay.” His shoulders jerk up, down. “I chose to be practical - and look how well that turned out.”

 

He stands fully then, drawing his arms off the chair.

“So what's stopping you now? It seems like you have all the time in the world; why not play? Why has it been ‘quite some time’?”

 

His lips purse a little, his mouth working before his lips part with an admission: “I sold my guitar. Needed the money. And I’ve been skint ever since, so there’s been no chance to replace it.”

 

He heads back to the foyer then, back to the pile of sensors, and for the first time since she met him, Regina genuinely feels bad for him. Feels sympathy. He’s still an idiot, there still must have been better options for making back a few thousand bucks than whatever shady deed he’d done, but… he’s miserable. Charming, handsome, helpful tonight, but he’s still carrying around this cloud of miserable self-loathing, and somehow the fact that he sold his guitar seems to make him nearly as miserable as losing his family.

 

It’s just a thing, she thinks. But then she thinks that’s what her mother would say - that something integral and sentimental is just… a thing.

 

She thinks of the piano behind her, of how much she had loathed it and loved it in turns growing up. Had hated the regimental practicing, the nitpicking, the perfectionism, but had loved the music. Had loved being able to create. Had loved sitting down when she was in a hot temper and banging out something dramatic and loud and quick, even if it drove her mother crazy. Especially if it drove her mother crazy. Had loved the lilting, dulcet tones, and the quiet evenings on a piano bench next to Daniel. Teaching him “Heart and Soul,” and giggling as he plunked clumsily along with her as she played.

 

Her heart squeezes, like something has put it in a vice grip, like someone has grabbed it and tightened a fist on her.

 

She tugs the bench out a few inches and settles on it properly as he’s coming back into the room.

 

“One song,” she tells him firmly. “One, and that’s it.”

 

Robin grins at her, a wide, happy thing that makes her heart stutter. Good God, he’s handsome. An idiot, and a criminal, and a mopey, moody musician. But handsome.

 

“Thank you,” he tells her, with such genuine feeling she can’t help but smile back for a moment.

 

But then she schools the smile away from her face, steels her features and tells him, “But I don’t sing, so don’t ask.”

 

He holds up his hands, another window sensor gripped in one, tools in the other, and swears, “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

 

**.::.**

 

Robin heads into her kitchen as she fiddles with the keys, pressing a few chords, nothing more, but he keeps his ears tuned to the soft sounds, wonders what exactly she’ll choose to play for him. What it is she has taken the time to learn and perfect now that it’s a choice and not a demand from her bitch of a mother – it comes as no surprise to him that the cold, caustic woman he’d had the distinct displeasure of listening to for his afternoon in the Mills mansion would be the type of parent to force years and years of piano lessons on her child. Come to think of it, they’ve a grand piano in their sitting room, if he recalls. He remembers admiring it privately as he passed through the house.

 

He wonders if she grew up there, if that’s the piano on which she learned to play.

 

And as he wonders, he glances around her kitchen - just the one window, above the sink. Just like John’s place. Although her kitchen is otherwise nothing like John’s. It seems the whole house has been renovated, because this room is all granite and white cupboards, a sleek new stainless steel fridge with an ice maker and all that. Appliances all like new, even though they’ve probably been here for several years. She doesn’t seem the type to let things fall into disrepair.

 

There are dishes in the sink, and that surprises him. Although on second thought, no. Not dishes. A glass tumbler with some sort of printing on the side, and a travel mug, a pan set to soak. Things to handwash, he bets, as he sets the sensor and necessary tools down on the countertop and reaches to carefully shift the few potted herbs she has in the tiny kitchen windowsill. It’s a small window, and a good ways off the ground (the lots slope toward the back, the windows back there are maybe ten feet up from the drive), one that’s had John joking more than once that anyone who could make it in through there can have whatever spoils they can carry in reward for their effort.

 

But he doesn’t imagine she shares the sentiment, so he’ll arm it just the same as the others.

 

She starts to play in earnest -- it takes him a few bars to realize that the steady measured notes are a song and not just her continuing to stretch her fingers, and several more after that for him to recognize the tune she’s chosen. But Marian has played this album again and again, and it’s one he’s grown to like himself. He’s always been rather fond of live albums, and Sara Bareilles’ cover of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” never disappoints as far as he’s concerned.

 

He hums along absently, trying to place the verse, the transition from there to the chorus. He finds his place after the first chorus ends, and sings softly as the second verse begins. “What do you think you’ll do then, I bet they shoot down your plane, it’ll take you a couple of vodka and tonics to get you on your feet again…”

 

He makes quick work of the sensor, affixing it easily, and enjoying for just a moment the feeling of making music again, of the blending of notes, the mix of instrument and voice. It feels good, familiar, a bit rusty but comfortable. Like an old coat you forgot you had stashed in the back of your closet, and find one day while rummaging around for something else entirely.

 

He can’t quite bring himself to stop, even as he walks back into the living room, back to her. She’s smiling softly, looking at the keys, does not look up when he approaches, but he knows she’s aware of him. He settles on the edge of the bench as the last chorus begins and she scoots slightly to make room for him to slide in beside her. Her playing is soft, as is his voice, a quiet end, and he cannot help watching her - not the grace of her fingers as they move deftly over keys, but her mouth, her full lower lip as she forms the words silently along with him. “Goodbye yellow brick road, where the dogs of society howl. You can’t plant me in your penthouse, I’m going back to my plow, back to the howling old owl in the woods, hunting the horny-backed toad. Oh, I’ve finally decided my future lies… I’ve finally decided my future lies…”

 

**.::.**

 

“I’ve finally decided my future lies beyond… the yellow brick road…”

 

He holds the last note out for a bit, soft and low, and his voice is… remarkably pleasant. Raspy and wonderful and making goosebumps rise beneath the silk of her sleeves. He’s sitting close, very close, wedged onto the edge of the bench, his thigh warm against hers, his sleeve brushing her own, and when she presses the final chord and looks up at him, he’s right _there_.

 

Looking at her.

 

His eyes are such a lovely blue… and intense…

 

It’s silent for a moment, just the two of them sitting, staring. It’s as if something has shifted, something has clicked, and for a second she forgets that this is a man she has deemed beneath her, not worth her time, a man who is down on his luck and living miserably because of his own poor choices.

 

For a second, he is just a man, who is looking straight into her in a way that makes her breath catch. Her tongue creeps out to wet her lips subconsciously, and she takes in a slow, deep breath, fights the urge to look down at his lips. Wonders what they’d feel like against her own.

 

Henry is upstairs. (It’s a dull voice in the back of her head.) And Robin is not a… He’s not a good… His eyes are _so_ blue…

 

And then he blinks, and the world shifts again, and he says to her, almost a plea, “Play me another.”

 

Regina looks away with a heavy swallow, staring dumbly down at the keys and wracking her brain for something, anything. Perhaps something that won’t have her staring so foolishly moon-eyed at a virtual stranger in her living room. Something less moody.

 

Her fingers press down onto the keys, one note, then one, two, three more, and he chuckles warmly and nods, her own smile spreading again as she plays through the beginning of the song.

 

And then his voice, that voice that still makes her shiver just a little.

 

“Sittin’ in the morning sun, I’ll be sittin’ til the evening comes, watching the ships roll in…”

 

There is nothing sexy about “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay,” she thinks. At least, nothing overtly sexy, and as long as she doesn’t look at him, as long as she keeps her eyes to herself, that ludicrous moment of tense attraction will fade.

 

And then he’s embellishing, knocking his shoulder into her playfully as he sings, and she’s laughing, nodding along with the music, grinning. She’s missed this - playing with someone _else_ , a voice other than her own to sound out the music, not knowing exactly what she’s going to hear next from him.

 

“Mom?”

 

She gasps, head whipping around, her arm knocking hard into Robin’s as the rest of her body follows, fingers leaving the keys with a discordant plunk. Her heart is thudding hard, surprise and for some reason a shred of mortification kicking up in her chest. Like she’s been caught doing something horribly inappropriate.

 

Henry is standing at the base of the stairs, looking at them curiously. Then he seems to recognize Robin, and grins.

 

“Hi, Robin!” he greets, padding into the room. “How’s Tuck?”

 

“Tuck’s well,” Robin answers with a slight nod, although he sounds just a little bit thrown by the intrusion as well. “And John’s back now, so perhaps your mum will let you drop by for a visit?”

 

They’re both looking at her then, and Regina drops the fallboard swiftly to cover the keys, then spins around to face Henry full-on as she considers. There’s really no reason not to let him go play with the dog - even with Robin’s little revelation tonight, she’s fairly certain he’s not dangerous. Boneheaded, maybe, and probably short-sighted, with a somewhat questionable view on morality, but… not _dangerous,_ per se.

 

So she concedes, “I think that could be allowed - on another night, when it’s not so late.”

 

“Yes!” Henry exclaims, and then his face screws up into a little frown and he asks, “What are you guys doing?”

 

She wonders what he must be thinking - coming downstairs to find his mother sitting at the piano with a strange man (not a complete stranger, sure, but the last time Robin had been here, he’d been a mess), laughing… flirting? No, they hadn’t been doing that. Still, it’s no wonder he’s a little confused.

 

“Robin brought us a security system to make amends for breaking in,” she tells him, mentally pulling herself back together. She feels off-kilter, unsteady, cannot place why. “He was just installing all the sensors.”

 

Henry gives her a look, a smirk, one he’s just recently perfected that she knows is going to be a precursor to some sassy comment, and sure enough, he snarks, “Is someone going to steal the piano?”

 

“Henry,” she says warningly, but Robin is chuckling next to her, and telling her son he begged a song out of her when he saw the piano, then asking if he’d like to help him with the rest of the installation.

 

Henry perks up and nods eagerly, and Regina glances at her watch and decides there’s still plenty of time before Henry has to be getting ready for bed.

 

“Is all your reading finished?” she asks, and he nods, “And your math?”

 

“Yep,” he tells her proudly. “All of it.” And then he holds out the sheets of paper clutched in his hand, and tells her, “Here, you can check it.” She hadn’t even noticed the papers before, but she rises now and moves to take them, Robin following after her once he’s tucked the bench back in its place.

 

“Then you can help Robin,” she tells him with a smile, glancing at the worksheets and muttering, “Come get me when you’re ready to do my room…” as she heads for her armchair again.

 

They disappear, headed for the office-slash-TV-room beyond the stairs, and Regina looks over Henry’s homework, then takes a few minutes to wash up the dishes in the sink and wipe down the countertops. By the time she’s standing in her bedroom doorway, watching Robin attach sensors to the windows there, too, she’s recovered from whatever bout of wayward hormones had had her thinking about his mouth and his blue eyes. She’s been single too long, she thinks. That’s all it was. Too long without being so close to such a handsome man. Nothing more.

 

He finishes his work, shows her and Henry how to set the code, how to arm and disarm the system, then points out the number for Regina to call and activate the service that will have the police knocking on her door if she doesn’t call off the dogs when the alarm is activated.

 

He’s gone shortly thereafter, and Regina goes back to her normal Sunday night routine, getting Henry ready for bed, drawing herself a hot bath and wallowing in it, deep conditioning her hair and applying a luminizing mask to her face. And if her mind occasionally wanders back to blue eyes and dimples, well… who can really blame her?

 


	5. Chapter 5

Another week has gone by, or nearly so anyway, and Robin hasn't given much more thought to Regina Mills. He's had other things on his mind, bigger fish to fry. He's been working, but as promised, August has arranged the schedule so he's had the shifts least in-demand - which translates to the shifts that earn the least in tips. Any money at all is better than none, though, so he's not complaining. Not at all.

But it's kept him busy at night from Monday through Wednesday, and despite the fact that he's never been anything but a good father, that he's never once put Roland in any harm, Marian has been insistent still that he can't take his son out of daycare while she's at work. He'd called a week ago, had asked again to see him, had told Marian he's gotten himself a job now, and he's got a birthday gift for their son. Had begged and pleaded to her voicemail, but he'd not heard from her until Monday, and even then it was just a text:  _Maybe next weekend. We'll talk._

He'd offered to come get him some morning, to watch him during the day and drop him back at the daycare in the afternoon, but she'd refused. Had said something about Roland's routine, but he wonders what it must be like for Roland's precious bloody routine to have his father there every day of his life and then suddenly gone. Cut off. He knows she's lied to explain away his absence. She's told Roland he was in bloody England of all places, that he'd had to go back and visit his own Mum and Dad, and that he couldn't call because it's very late in Britain, you see, and Robin had been furious. Had been furious that she'd roped him into a lie, one he's going to have to maintain. ("Oh, now lying is a problem for you?" Marian had bit caustically over the line, a fortnight ago, when he'd finally gotten her to pick up the phone at all.)

The whole situation is a mess. It's hurtful, and demoralizing. Makes Robin want to kick walls and punch pillows, and perhaps that's not a good thing to admit - the violent tension of his anger. Perhaps he's no good for his son after all.

No.

No, that's not true; he refuses to believe that. He's a good man - one who lost his way for a while, perhaps, but he's a good man at heart. And he's a good father, he knows that, and his heart aches for his boy, for every day he's missed with him, for every new thing he's learned that Robin has not been there to teach him, for the giggles he's missed, and the smiles and the tears. He feels the loss of his son keenly, like someone's chopped off a limb. Cut out something vital.

He  _needs_  to see his boy again.

So here it is Saturday morning, and he's not yet heard from Marian. Roland usually takes a short nap in the late morning, so Robin waits until then to call, wants to make sure she has time to talk without their son overhearing, to argue if need be, although he sincerely hopes they don't. He's tired of arguing with her, just wants everything to go back to the way it was before. Before he ruined it all with his reckless stupidity.

The phone rings twice before she picks up, and she sighs as she tells him, "Hi, Robin."

"Hello, love," he greets. "How's your week been?"

"I'll bring him by this afternoon, after lunch," she tells him (straight to the chase then, apparently), and he thinks she sounds tired. Worn out. A bit defeated. He wishes he could be there with her instead of just on the phone. Wishes he could soothe whatever troubles her - wishes especially that what troubles her isn't him, although he's fairly certain it is. That it's all of this, and he's to blame for everything.

"Thank you," he tells her, trying to put weeks' worth of feeling into two little words. "Does he know he's coming?"

"No," Marian says with a bit of a scoff. "I wanted him to actually sleep. He'd never have taken a nap if he knew; he'd have been too excited." There's a pause wherein Robin finds himself smiling with relief - at least someone will be happy to see him. It's been weeks since he's known that feeling. Then she mutters, "He misses you," and Robin feels twin swells of guilt and anger.

"He needn't have," he replies, even though he knows it will rankle her, and wasn't it just moments ago he'd been thinking he'd rather not fight? But her outright refusal to allow him any access to Roland, not so much as a sodding phone call on the boy's  _birthday_ , has him angrier than much of anything ever has.

"Don't start, Robin," she warns him, sure enough. "You got yourself into this-"

"I'm not the one keeping me apart from Roland, Marian."

"No, you're just the one who-" Her voice drops suddenly, and it hadn't been all that loud to begin with; he wonders if Roland is still awake after all. "-broke into someone's house, stole several thousand dollars worth of jewelry, and pawned it for cash. Except, of course, for the piece you saved for me."

That had been his downfall. He'd pawned everything but one piece, a bracelet ringed with small diamonds, and rubies, and sapphires. It had been lovely, and almost modest, and he'd thought she would fancy it. He'd thought she'd assume all the stones were fake, that she wouldn't question his gift. And in the beginning, she hadn't, but he'd made the mistake of giving it to her in the box he'd found it in, the one it had surely come in, and not two weeks after Christmas she'd pulled the inner lining up by accident and found a tag tucked inside:  _To my dear heart, Cora, on our anniversary. Love, Henry_.

Her first assumption had been that he'd bought it secondhand - not an unfair guess, considering she was well aware he'd put his guitar in hoc weeks before, when things had been tight. And she'd decided he'd been moody and miserable ever since, and she'd rather have him with his instrument back in his hands than wear semi-precious jewels around her wrist, so she'd marched right back down to that pawn shop on a weekend afternoon and asked the appraiser there how much she could get for it, if it would be enough to buy one of the several guitars he'd had in stock at the time. It had been worth far more than enough, and Robin had come home from drinks with John and Will to find his lover stony-faced on the sofa, the bracelet, the box, and the card sitting bold as daylight on the coffee table before her.

The row that had ensued - over why he had spent every penny in their savings on a silly bracelet when they were already struggling (assumption number two on her part, one that would quickly unravel), over where it had come from, over him having  _done WHAT?_ \- had been loud enough to wake Roland, and Robin had been off to John's for the night because she'd hissed that she couldn't even look at him right then.

And there he'd been ever since.

"For my family," he says, for what must be the one trillionth time in the last month.

"Robin, please," Marian argues wearily. "Don't. I don't want to have this argument again. I'll drop Roland off at two, run some errands, and be back for him by five."

"Three hours?" he questions her. "That's it?"

"He's in bed by 7:30, and he needs dinner, and a bath, and-"

"I can cook him dinner," Robin insists, "And I can bring him home in time for a bath before bed. I could come home, and help with his bath, and put him down, and maybe we could talk for a bit after he–"

"We have nothing to talk about," she tells him shortly, but her voice is soft, he thinks there's pain there.

He feels the little niggle of panic up his spine, a familiar sensation in the last few anxious weeks. He's been convinced that this is not permanent, that they will work things out, that all of this can be fixed and he can get back to life as normal, but every time they've spoken, she's sounded more and more resolved, and it has him grasping at some way to make her stay, to keep her with him.

"How can you say that?" he asks her gently. "We've sorted nothing out. You won't hear me."

"Oh, I hear you, Robin. I just don't like what I hear."

He rakes a hand through his hair, exhales heavily and flops back onto his bed. "I was trying to do the–"

"Robin, I've heard it already. And I know you believe the things you're saying, or at least I think you do - I don't really know anymore, to be honest. I feel like I don't know you at all."

"You  _do_ ," he insists. "I'm still me. I'm still the man you-"

"No, you're not," she tells him before he even gets a chance to finish his sentence. "The man I fell in love with wasn't a thief, or a liar, or a coward, and you have been all of those things, Robin. I don't know what happened to you, or how I missed it, but you've changed. And I don't like the change."

"I'm trying to change back," he tells her, watching the blades of his ceiling fan spin and spin and spin over his head until he's dizzy. "I'm trying to make everything right. To fix everything I cocked up. Please, Marian."

"Robin…"

She's not convinced. He's begged and pleaded himself blue over the last month, but she remains unconvinced. He'd thought maybe now that he had a job things would be different, that she'd see he was trying, see he was changing, and she'd come around, but she still hasn't, and Robin is at a loss. Rudderless. No clue what tactic to use to guide her home to him - or him home to her, rather, because he's the one adrift and alone while she sleeps in their bed and eats in their kitchen and tucks their child in at night.

"What can I say to convince you to give this another shot?" he asks, hoping she will help him, hoping she will just bloody tell him what she needs. What hoop he needs to jump through, what penance he has to pay.

She sounds her weariest yet when she questions, "Is there anything honest you haven't said already in the last few weeks?"

No. The answer is no. He's out of things to say, out of ways to plead with her.

All he has left is desperation and failure, and, "Marian, I am trying."

"You've said that already."

"I love you," he tells her, as ardently as he can manage, because shouldn't that be enough? Love? Isn't love enough to fight for, to try again?

"Do you?" she questions, and that she doubts that is so stunning it has his mouth snapping shut dumbly. "Truly? Or are you just... comfortable?" He does, he's certain of it. He must love her, he has loved her for ages, she is the mother of his child, the woman he has spent the last five years with, sleeping beside, fucking passionately, kissing good morning. Of course he loves her. "Because the time we've spent apart has given me a chance to think, to see things more clearly. And I don't think we love each other anymore, Robin. I don't think we have for a while. Not really. I certainly don't think we've been blissfully happy. I feel like… I feel like we've been staying together because it's what we're used to. Because it's easier than leaving. And that's not what I want, not for me and not for Roland."

"Marian…"

"It's over, Robin," she tells him, resolutely but with the tiniest of quivers in her voice, and he finds his throat is suddenly thick and tight. "I don't know how you really feel, and I don't know if you do either, but I know how I feel. And I don't want this anymore. I won't keep you from having a relationship with Roland, but you no longer have one with me. I'm done."

He doesn't know what to say to that. Doesn't know how else he can try to change her mind - suspects for the first time that he truly can't. He doesn't speak, just lets out a heavy breath, his tongue like lead.

"I'll see you in a little while, and… you can bring him home after dinner, and get the rest of your things." When Robin still doesn't answer, she asks, "Okay?"

His "Yeah," is low and hollow, and then she's saying goodbye, and Robin hangs up the phone with a heavy sigh. He sits up, drops his face into his palms, scrubbing them up and down and then letting them fall away.

So that's that, then.

They're over.

He waits for the pang of sadness, for the desperate grief of losing her, but it doesn't come. Instead he just feels... numb. Hollow.

Perhaps Marian is right, perhaps what they had left wasn't love, but the last dregs of something that had once been good. Because what Robin feels now isn't the deep sadness of lost love, just the same, heavy weight of failure he's been feeling for months.

Another thing he's cocked all to hell.

Another good thing ruined by his one reckless act. No, it hadn't been one thing to ruin them, couldn't have been. It was many little things along the way, it must have been… Somewhere he'd gone wrong, taken a bad turn and not seen it until it was too late to turn round. But right now, today, it feels like it's all his fault.

He sits for a while and just stares at his phone, at the photograph of his darling boy grinning up at him from the screen.

He'll be here soon, finally after all this time, and that's something.

Enough for today - will have to be.

**.::.**

Regina's stomach is already in knots, and her parents won't arrive for another six hours. But that's six hours in which she has to finish cleaning the house, shower and dress herself in something Mother will have a hard time criticizing, make Henry presentable, prep and make dinner… Six hours may sound like plenty of time, but Regina already feels the ticking of the clock as she maneuvers the alleyway that runs behind their block and pulls her car into the drive.

She pops her trunk and steps out of the car, slings her purse over her shoulder, is headed around toward the back of the car when she sees him.

Robin.

He's meandering her way, in jeans and a leather jacket, a hoodie zipped up underneath and a scarf wrapped around his neck (so he does own one, after all). His hands are jammed into his pockets, his face tipped down to stare at the sidewalk, his shoulders hunched. He looks… miserable. Like a kicked puppy.

She shouldn't care - she doesn't care - but still, she can't help greeting him cordially once he's in earshot. His head whips up - she'd startled him - but he offers her a smile - or tries to, anyway. It doesn't reach anywhere near his eyes, barely makes it across his lips, and the part of her that is drawn to the broody, serious men (Daniel had never been that way, had been easygoing and light, but Graham… Graham had been prone to dark moods and long stretches of brooding and she'd always found them in turns incredibly irritating and terribly sexy) aches with sympathy.

She tilts her head slightly, looks him up and down and asks, "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," he assures, smiling again (he'd already dropped the first curve of lips) and this time he almost sells it.

Still…

"I'm fairly skilled at spotting a liar…" she tells him, and he drops the pretenses again, letting out a heavy sigh and letting his shoulders lift and fall.

"I've just gotten off the phone with Marian," he says, and,  _well_ , she thinks,  _say no more_. "She's made it quite clear that we are... over."

It's not terribly surprising to Regina. She knows she doesn't know all the details, but for a woman to keep her son from his father for a whole month, things had to have been pretty dire. Still, she can see that it's fresh pain, and so she smiles sympathetically and says she's sorry.

Robin shakes his head, looks down at the pavement for a moment. "My own fault."

"Yes," she agrees, because it is, and she's not one to mince words or coddle. But she's not entirely heartless, so she adds, "But that doesn't make it any easier. Probably the opposite."

Robin nods, but says nothing.

"What about your son?" she asks, hoping she hasn't just scraped claws across another sore wound.

But he brightens then, just a little, a genuine smile tugging the corners of his mouth upwards. "She's bringing him by at two," he tells her, his mood still dour, but there's a lightness at the edges now. He seems an odd mix of depressed and almost giddy. "I'll have him through dinner - I'm off to the store now. I thought I might make him pasta, but we've no sauce, or breakfast, but we've no eggs. We've a box of mac and cheese, which is his absolute favorite, but no butter and John's used the last of the milk on his cereal this morning. So. Off I go."

By the time he finishes, Regina's brows are halfway to her hairline, her lips in a bemused smirk. Men. How in the world do they live like that - with half of everything they need and yet not enough to make an actual meal.

She rolls her eyes, tells him, "Oh, for God's sake. Let me guess, the place is filthy, too?"

"It is not," Robin defends, and then he grimaces slightly and concedes, "A bit cluttered, perhaps, but it's not dirty." His expression drops again and then he mutters, "Marian's going to think it's an absolute sty. I ought to clean up before she gets here."

Regina chuckles softly - sure enough. She glances back at her several bags of groceries and multiple bouquets of flowers, and decides to take pity on him. "Help me carry these in and I'll send you home with butter and milk. Save you some time."

Normally, she'd have hollered for Henry after the first trip inside, but this will do.

"You don't have to do that," he tells her, but he's stepping forward anyway, reaching for two sacks and hefting them easily. "But I'll help you carry regardless. Chivalry, and all that."

"My hero," she teases sarcastically, grabbing one of the bouquets for herself and leading him toward the back steps. She fishes her keys out of her purse at the top, lets herself in. She can hear the sound of the TV coming from the back room just a few steps away - no, not the TV. A video game. Deciding to leave Henry to his distractions for a while, she nods Robin in the direction of the kitchen, and settles the flowers on the tabletop next to the two dozen chocolate chip cookies that are laid out to cool. Two dozen minus three, she notices, although she can't say she's terribly surprised that Henry dipped into them while she was gone.

"Where should I…?" he asks her, lifting his bags pointedly.

"The counter's fine," she tells him, and he slides the bags onto the empty space near the sink and heads back out, Regina following after him. It's two more bags of groceries for him, and two more bouquets for her, and then she's nudging the trunk closed and toeing the door shut behind them.

He's already opened her refrigerator when she walks into the kitchen, something that rankles her, despite the fact that she can see he's just trying to be polite and put things away (there's a full carton of milk in one of his hands, a bunch of lettuce in the other).

"All this food and you've gone shopping again?" he asks, with curious amusement - the fridge is nowhere near empty, she's well stocked on the basics. This was a precision-buying trip.

"This is just for tonight," she tells him, her voice filling with dread when she adds, "My parents are coming for dinner."

He seems to pause for a second, stiffens, and then he's turning away from the fridge where he's put things away God only knows where and reaching for something else in the bag. She should stop him before he makes an absolute mess of her fridge and adds reorganizing to the list of things she has to do today.

"I take it you're not looking forward to the visit?" he asks her, and she squeezes into the space between him and the fridge door, surprised to find he's put the milk away exactly where she wants it (though to be fair, there's another nearly empty carton right beside it). The greens are on a shelf instead of the crisper, but it's an easy fix.

When she turns back he nearly bumps into her, they're so close, and he startles a little at their proximity, then takes a slight step back and passes her the groceries in his hands. She stows them away where they go, and then answers, "Yes and no. My father is a wonderful man." He continues unpacking as she talks, hands her things to put away one by one. "Kind, and loving, and I haven't seen him in a while, so that will be nice. But my mother… can be difficult. She always seems to find something to pick on. Something I'm not doing well enough. Some new piece of furniture that she hates, or the one C on Henry's report card and how it's going to set him up for a lifetime of underachieving even though he's only ten, or not getting the lead on the big new account at work when I have seniority. And then she'll move on to why I'm still single, and…"

She glances up at him, and finds him giving her a lopsided sort of smile as he watches her curiously. She's babbling, she realizes with a sheepish sort of smile. Rambling nervously, and it's more than she would usually admit to a stranger, more than she ought to admit to him maybe, but it's not as though she doesn't know a good portion of his shitty life. Might as well offer him something in return. But she doesn't want to burden him, and doesn't want his pity, so she leans in conspiratorially and adds, "I don't suppose you want to come and pretend to be my boyfriend? Knock one off the list?"

Robin laughs at her, his brows lifting and falling, and she realizes it had come out much… flirtier than she'd intended. He doesn't seem to mind, though.

"Dinner with the parents without even the promise of a snog afterward?" he questions, and, oh, those dimples are deep and friendly again. He's not good for her starved hormones, this man. "I'm sorry, but I'm not quite that altruistic. I think I'll stick with my son."

"Wise choice," she concedes with a bit of a grimace. "My mother would hate you anyway."

"Oh really?" he asks with a lift of his brows. "I'll have you know I'm quite charming. Mothers love me."

"Not this one," she tells him with a shake of her head. "You're too…" She looks him up and down, appraisingly, and concludes, "Pedestrian. Mother believes one's trajectory must always continue moving upward. She'd want to see me with a banker, or a lawyer, or a politician. Someone who wears Brooks Brothers and spent his college years in an Ivy League fraternity."

"Gits, the lots of them," he tells her shortly, and she smirks.

"Yes, well. She has high expectations for me."

"And you've not lived up to them?" he asks, seems baffled by the very idea. "With your well-kept home, and your bright and charming son, and your, I'm assuming, successful career."

Regina lets out another rueful chuckle, shaking her head and telling him, "My home is not the most desirable of neighborhoods, my son was born out of wedlock, and my career would be even more successful if I hadn't taken two years off in the middle of it to mourn my fiancé—whom she also disliked—and raise my son."

For a moment, Robin just looks at her, his brow scrunched, his lips pressed together. And then he says, "You know, I find I really dislike your mother."

Regina laughs - she probably shouldn't, but she does - and quips, "And you haven't even met her."

She really shouldn't be doing this, badmouthing Mother the way she is. To a stranger. But she finds this stranger particularly easy to talk to for some reason, and she's still feeling jittery with nerves over how the evening will go. It's nice, for a moment, to be able to confess to someone who couldn't possibly look down on her how much her mother picks at her for every little thing.

Still, it's rude, and far too personal, so she reaches for the fresh pack of butter she'd bought at the store, peels open the cardboard packaging and slips a stick from the box, then reaches for the half-spent carton of milk.

As she does, she concedes, "She's not horrible; I'm just venting inappropriately." Handing Robin the milk and butter, she tells him, "You should probably get to that cleaning. It's noon already."

"Right," he agrees with a soft smile. "Thank you." He lifts the butter and milk slightly in his grasp, "Both for these, and for giving me a few minutes' distraction. John's been out all morning; it's just me and the dog."

He's lonely. Lonely, and sad, and she really needs to stop feeling even a shred of sympathy for a man who is lonely and sad because of his own idiotic deeds. Just because she's feeling edgy, and he's being so kind, doesn't mean she should let things between them get overly friendly.

"Well, I'd hate for your son to starve or have to play in squalor." They're still standing there in front of the open refrigerator, and it occurs to Regina that they're just letting out all the cold air and wasting electricity. So as she concedes with a bit of that sympathy she should be suppressing, "And you looked like someone had kicked your puppy. I felt oddly compelled to see that you were alright," she takes a step back and shuts the door.

"Well, I appreciate it," he tells her, and then, "Good luck with your dinner."

"Good luck with your son," she replies in turn.

She'll dust the living room surfaces next, she thinks, already mentally moving on with her list. She'll dust, and then she'll set out the flowers she bought, and - as she turns to look at the bouquets on the table, she gets an idea.

"Do you want to take some cookies?" she offers. "For your son."

Robin looks over at them, all golden brown and enticing on their racks, and she can see how much he wants to say yes, but he shakes his head and tells her, "No, that's alright. I wouldn't want to put you out more than I already have."

"I insist," she urges. "Take some. Hell, take half. God knows I don't need them here."

"No, I couldn't," he insists. "You're having company; keep your sweets."

"You'd be doing me a favor, honestly."

"A favor?"

"Let me tell you how this is going to go," Regina argues, reaching for two cookies and stacking them to the side. "Henry will be given two cookies and sneak two more when he thinks I'm not looking." She adds the aforementioned snuck cookies, and continues to pull every one she mentions as she speaks on, "My mother will have one. I will take one bite of mine and she will make some expertly-timed comment about how it looks like I've put on a few pounds, or ask if I've heard about that new study that says the key to weight loss is actually low carb instead of low fat, and then I will lose my appetite entirely, and give the rest to my father, who will have already had one, two at most. And that leaves a solid dozen cookies for you and your son, which Henry won't need after the nearly ten he'll have wolfed down and I will feel too guilty to eat myself."

"That's… insane," he deduces, glancing between her and the stack of cookies.

Regina feels a flare of embarrassment in her belly. Why is she saying all this to him? One hand lifts to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear as she acknowledges, "Yes. Well."

She doesn't know what else to say, so she walks away from him, moves to the cupboards to get a tupperware container, and begins to pack away cookies before he can give her another protest.

There's silence for a minute, but it's tense, like they're both on the verge of speaking and neither will take the step.

Robin breaks first, beginning almost awkwardly, "Pardon me for saying so, but your body is…" She looks over at him and finds him checking her out - a quick thing, just a glance up and down. She thinks of Sidney, of the way he always takes her in and makes her skin crawl. Robin, though, Robin has her holding her breath, awaiting the verdict. Berating herself for doing so, for caring even the slightest bit for what he might think. "...in rather incredible shape," he concludes, and Regina finds herself biting back a smile. She doesn't spend all those hours working out for nothing. "If your mother says otherwise, she's wrong."

"I know," Regina admits. "But knowing doesn't change anything. She's my mother; she knows all the tender spots."

"Because she's the one who's been poking at them your whole life?"

Yes, she thinks. That's exactly why.

"You're awfully nosy today," she accuses frostily, evading the conversation that is officially becoming much too personal much too quickly. And true, she may have led them down this path, may have taken the first steps there herself, but… he's hitting a nerve, now, is making her stomach churn with unwanted anxiety, and she has enough of that already. She wants him out, suddenly. Wants him away from her, so she won't be tempted to continue revealing all her scars to him.

He stiffens, ducks his head guiltily, and apologizes. "You're right. I'm sorry. I'll head home, get out of your hair."

She nods her head, doesn't look at him, moves to free the flowers from their cellophane wrapping and listens for the sound of the door closing behind him.

When she hears it (soft and quiet, almost dripping with resignation, and how can one close a door in such a depressing way - or maybe she's projecting, she must be projecting…), she feels a lance of guilt in her belly. He'd only been trying to be kind, and he was already having an awful day.

She could have been kinder.

Could have told him goodbye, at the very least, but she'd… he'd… she…

She'd revealed too much of herself, given far too much away. She is not the talking type, not the sharing type, and she curses her mother for being so…  _Cora_  that she has Regina all in knots, has her so twisted up and turned around over a simple dinner that she's spilling her guts to the neighbor like they're friends, or like they're… Like she needs that sort of thing. Someone to talk to, someone to listen, someone to tell her to let it all roll off her the way Daniel used to, the way Graham had tried to.

Robin is not the only one who is lonely, she realizes, shutting her eyes and pressing her palms to the table for a moment. She is, too. She misses having someone. Misses having a balm for her battered ego on nights like this.

But that is weak. It is weak, and it is stupid. And she is neither of those things, nor is she needy, nor is she about to turn into a weepy, neurotic mess in front of a neighbor she barely knows much less likes just because he's guessed at her private pain. (She'd made the guessing game remarkably easy for him.)

She tips her chin up, and balls up the cellophane from the flowers, tossing it in the trash before hunting down the dusting spray. And if she's blinking back tears as she does it, well that's his fault as much as it's Cora's, and screw him for that, too.


	6. Chapter 6

"Daddy!"

Roland's shout is loud and gleeful, and has Robin grinning instantly. He'd seen Marian's car pull up and had been unable to wait, bringing his plate and cup to the kitchen and then heading outside before they'd even made it toward the walk. Roland is out of his car seat at least, and he wriggles in Marian's grasp as Robin jogs down the steps. When Marian finally lets their son down to the ground, he runs on his little legs, grinning and giggling and Robin's heart is close to bursting. He scoops the boy up into his arms, lifting him high and giving him a little toss before pulling him in close for a fierce bear hug.

"Daddy, you're back!" he shouts right in Robin's ear, but Robin couldn't care less at the volume. (He's so happy in this exact moment that he's not even bothered by the implications of the words - by the lie he's been roped into and the trip he's said to have taken.) He'd let Roland holler him deaf if it meant having him close enough to hear and touch and smell - he buries his face into his boy's neck and breathes in the scent of baby shampoo and detergent, laughing when Roland squeals and writhes at the tickle of his beard against soft skin. Tiny hands tug at the back of his head until he lifts it, and then Roland's fingers pat at his cheeks, the boy's dimples deep and happy as he continues to giggle. "Missed you!" Roland exclaims, and Robin feels a hot twist of guilt and anger, glancing over the boy's shoulder at Marian, who is watching them with a sad sort of smile, pulling her coat a little tighter against the bite of the breeze.

Still, all he says is, "I missed you too, my boy. You've gotten so big - you must be five feet taller now, hmm?"

Roland giggles and shakes his head, says, "Nooo."

Robin nods insistently. "Oh, yes, you must be. Maybe even six feet," he tells him, and then Roland's eyes go wide and fearful, his body rigid. Robin turns to see what the boy has caught sight of and finds Tuck bounding eagerly toward them from where Robin has left the front door open.

The dog hops up against Robin's legs, paws against his thigh and barks a hello, but Roland twists in Robin's grasp, points his little finger and shouts, "NO! Bad dog! Go 'way!"

Tuck just barks again, tongue lolling out of his mouth as he waits to be petted.

"Now, now," Robin chides Roland, dropping one hand to give Tuck a light push until he settles on his rump at Robin's feet. "Tuck's just saying hello." He glances back at the dog, and addresses him, "A bit rudely, perhaps, but he's excited to see his friend Roland."

Still, Roland cowers into Robin's neck, tucking his face away and whining. Robin's not quite sure what to do with him - Roland's never been shy around animals before, least of all Tuck, whom he's known since he was a wee babe.

"He, um," Marian speaks up, "He had an incident with a dog at the park about a week and a half ago. Roland reached to pet without asking, and got snapped at. He's been skittish ever since, but I figured he'd be fine with Tuck."

"Apparently not," Robin mutters, shifting his hold on Roland until it's more secure and crouching down so they're closer to eye level with the dog. He's sitting docilely, tail wagging, but he stands when they crouch and noses into Robin's arm, sniffs at Roland who wriggles anxiously. "You remember Tuck, hmm?" Robin encourages. "He's a nice doggy."

"Daddy, no…" Roland protests, pressing himself up against Robin again. But then suddenly he's twisting away, reaching up toward Marian, and crying, "Mama, help!"

"Robin, just keep the dog outside for a while until Roland's settled in," Marian sighs, and Robin stands again, scowling. Well, that was entirely unhelpful. "Maybe he'll be better then."

"And where exactly should I put him, Marian? It's not as though we have a fenced-in yard. And it's bloody March; he'll freeze just sitting out there." He finds he's angry with her all of a sudden. Hurt, and angry, and annoyed at this whole situation. Annoyed that they're at odds instead of a unit, annoyed that his son's been afraid of dogs for a whole week and a half and he's only just finding out now. Annoyed that he's seeing Roland at what is apparently now Robin's semi-permanent domicile instead of going  _home_  to be with him like he ought to be. Annoyed that she never gave him a sodding chance to even  _try_  to mend their relationship after his colossal blunder.

For her part, Marian is standing there stony-faced now, arms crossed tightly over her chest. She takes a deep breath in, then out, and suggests, "Then shut him in one of the bedrooms for a while. But you won't have a very enjoyable afternoon if Roland spends the whole time stressed out and frightened. And frankly, that's not the kind of day I want for my son."

" _Our_  son," Robin corrects her, because how dare she claim ownership of him all of a sudden like Robin hasn't been there every day of his life? Is this how things are going to be now? Tense and angry and possessive?

"You know what I meant," Marian mutters, and Roland snuggles closer into Robin's neck, his little nose pressing against his father's skin.

"Daddy, it's cold," he declares. The breeze has kicked up, and it is a bit nippy, especially for Robin standing there without even his coat or hoodie.

"Alright, lad, let's get you inside," he murmurs to his son, still no clue what to do with the dog. He looks to Marian, asks, "Does he have a bag with toys or anything?"

She nods, uncrosses her arms and holds up the hand gripping just such a bag. He hadn't even noticed she'd been holding it until now. "Do you still have his seat in your car, or do you need this one?"

Robin shakes his head, reaching for the bag. "No, I've got it."

"He should be back for bath time by seven, earlier if he needs dinner, too," she instructs, and Robin shoulders the bag, wraps his arms more snugly around Roland's body and tries to resist the urge to remind her that he's well acquainted with Roland's routine; he doesn't need to be told.

"I've dinner for him here," he insists instead, looking at his son as he says, "We're going to have a bit of mac and cheese, how does that sound?"

"Yes!" Roland declares, eyes lighting up, and Robin can't help smiling in return. He's never been a master chef, but mac and cheese he can handle, and it's certainly not the first time he and Roland have made a meal of it. It's rather a specialty of his at this point.

"Fine," Marian agrees. "Then seven. Latest."

"I'll be there," he tells her, trying to keep the weariness out of his voice and meeting her gaze before adding, "I promise."

She nods then, apparently satisfied, stepping up and pressing a kiss to Roland's cheek, stroking her fingers through his hair, and murmuring, "Mommy loves you," and "Have fun with Daddy, okay?"

"You're going?" Roland asks, his little brow wrinkling in confusion - and of course it is, because the boy's got no idea his parents are no longer together, and as far as he's concerned, they should all be celebrating excitedly at being reunited after weeks apart.

For the first time since she got there, Robin sees a flicker of pain in Marian's eyes, her cool mask slipping as she flounders for what to say without saying everything. She settles on a, "I have some things I need to do today, but Daddy will bring you home tonight," that would not be terribly convincing to anyone over the age of five. But Roland is a mere three, and so he takes her words at face value, despite the pinched look on her face and the way her eyes lock with Robin's for a moment - but only a moment - before they skitter away again.

Roland nods and gives her cheek a messy kiss in return, then waves his goodbye. Tuck offers his own in the form of a bark, and Roland, who seemed to have forgotten the imminent threat of possibly being licked to death for a few moments, stiffens in Robin's hold and whines again. "Daddy, no doggy," he insists, sticking out his lower lip pitifully, his eyes round and fearful.

Marian is already headed for the driver's side of the car, but she glances back as she opens the door, and reads the scene instantly. He can see the moment of hesitation, can see her mouth twist into a deeper frown, and he's loathe to be browbeaten again over the dog, over anything, so he turns before Marian can say anything and heads for the neighbor's house on impulse.

He knows she's busy, knows he'll be interrupting, knows they didn't exactly part on the most cordial of terms this morning, but he also knows that Henry has wanted some time with the pup, and, well, what anxious mother doesn't want her kid out of the house and out of her hair for a little while, right?

He hopes.

Tuck seems to know where they're headed before they even finish passing the other side of John's duplex, and he bounds ahead and trots his way up Regina's porch, settling down dutifully on the doormat and thumping his tail back and forth.

"Where we goin'?" Roland asks, "Uncle John's house is that way."

"It is indeed, but a very nice boy lives in this house, and I thought I'd see if he could take old Tuck here for a walk, and then perhaps when they get back, he won't be so hyper, and you'll not be so frightened of him," Robin explains as he heads up Regina's walk and says a silent prayer that she will be swayed by puppy eyes and toddler dimples and whatever lingering sympathy she may have from earlier.

"He'll bite me," Roland murmurs pitifully, and Robin gives him a squeeze, assures him that Tuck will do no such thing. He's a friendly doggy, remember?

"You've played with Tuck since you were a tiny little thing, and he's never bitten you," Robin reminds.

"But… but he could bite now?"

"He won't," Robin assures. "But we'll see if Henry can take him for a bit just the same, alright, my boy?"

Roland nods at that, and cuddles in closer to Robin's neck as they climb the steps. He's murmuring about the cold again as Robin presses the doorbell, an unnecessary reminder considering how Robin's arms are flecked with gooseflesh even beneath his shirt.

It's only a moment before the door opens, and he finds himself having to bite back a smile at the sight that greets him.

Regina, looking ornery as a hornet, is standing on the other side of the threshold, now in dark leggings and a threadbare old Boston College sweatshirt that's several sizes too large, brandishing a cleaning rag and a scowl.

"Hello, Regina," he greets with his most charming smile.

"Let me guess, you need to borrow a pot to cook it all in?" she asks, as though it hasn't been two hours since last they spoke, as though they're simply continuing where they left off.

Her gaze flicks to Roland, then, and softens, her frowning lips twitching up into a smile despite her best efforts to continue glaring at him.

"Actually, I was hoping I could borrow your son for a little while," Robin tells her. "It seems Roland here is a bit frightened of dogs all of a sudden. I thought maybe Henry could take Tuck for a walk, and give him a bit of time to come around to the idea."

She's still looking at Roland, her smile easy now as the boy peeks out from Robin's neck again.

"You're afraid of Tuck?" she asks, her voice disbelieving but somehow soft and kind, more so than he's ever heard it. It makes him smile despite himself, this glimpse of a mother's touch from her. Roland nods against his neck, and Regina hums softly then tells him, "Well, I don't think you have anything to worry about; he's a very nice dog. But I do think Henry could use some fresh air, and he's been remarkably adept at sneaking cookies behind my back all afternoon, so..." She turns her head, calls down the hallway, "Henry, come here please!"

Tuck is up on his feet then, about to trot his way into the house, but Regina stills him with a firm and pointed, "No.  _Sit_." Tuck isn't always the most obedient of dogs, but he lands on his rump again immediately at her tone that brooks no disobedience. "The last thing I need in this house right now is dog hair and muddy paw prints."

"He's clean," Robin defends, rubbing a hand over Roland's back as the boy snuggles in close again.

Regina narrows her eyes slightly at the movement, then sighs and opens the front door further, beckoning him forward. "Will you bring that child in out of the cold before he freezes?"

Robin doesn't need to be invited twice. He steps over the threshold, but doesn't dare go any further than the mat inside, letting the door swing mostly closed as he spies Henry making his way down the hall. He catches sight of Robin and perks up, closing the gap more quickly.

"Hey!" he greets. "What are you doing here?"

"The doggy," Roland answers soberly, and Robin has to stifle a chuckle at the seriousness with which his toddler had spoken.

"Your mother has graciously given me permission to take advantage of your dog walking services," Robin explains, and the young lad's face brightens instantly.

"Really?" he asks, looking to his mum.

"Really," she confirms. "Put on your coat, I don't want any complaints about a hat and scarf in this weather, and I want you back here by 4:30 to get ready for your grandparents."

Henry nods and scrambles for his shoes, plunking down to the floor and tugging them onto his feet. Robin adjusts his hold on Roland and takes a second to really look at Regina (he likes the look of her, and there's nothing wrong with that, with appreciating a beautiful woman, even when your own heart is in a bit of confusion). There's silence for a moment and then he asks, "Boston College?" nodding toward her sweatshirt.

It's Henry who answers from where he's now tying his laces. "My dad went there," he says matter of factly. Robin is still looking at Regina, so he doesn't miss the way her lips quirk up at the corners in a bittersweet little smile that fades almost as soon as it's begun.

"My daddy went to London!" Roland interjects, wanting to be a part of things apparently. "He just got back."

One of Regina's dark eyebrows lifts up, and Robin finds himself wondering how someone can put so many different emotions into a simple gesture. Derision. Sympathy. Amusement.

"I'm sure it was quite the trip," she tells Roland, and for some reason Robin feels a hot lick of shame. Feels judged once again. But when Henry stands and starts to say a confused  _Wait, but he's been-_ , she interrupts and speaks over him, telling him to get his coat with a pointed shake of her head. Henry frowns, but obeys.

Robin gives her what he hopes is a look of gratitude, and she nods softly in return, then smiles at Roland and points out that they haven't been properly introduced.

"I'm Roland!"

"It's very nice to meet you, Roland," she tells him, holding out her hand to shake his. Robin grins, quite enjoying her apparent soft spot for children. "I'm Regina."

"Nice to meet you," Roland parrots back at her, and now it's Regina who's grinning.

And then Henry is ready to go, and they're off and out the door.

**.::.**

At precisely 4:36, Regina shoves her feet into the single pair of Ugg boots she owns and heads out the door. She'll be shoving said short boots into the back of her closet as soon as she returns home, because Lord only knows what her mother would say if she caught sight of them – that they're hideous and unflattering, most likely, and if Regina were being honest, she'd admit that Cora is probably right. But they're warm and they're comfortable, easy to slip on and off, and the quick trek she's about to make to the neighbor's is as far as she's ever worn them outside of the house, so who really cares?

The rest of her looks perfectly presentable - she's in slim-cut camel khakis and a cozy, cream-colored cable-knit sweater. One that drapes just a little, just enough to mask any part of her that might bulge or pinch and give Cora something to criticize. She's kept her makeup light and simple, and is wearing the earrings Mother gave her for Christmas, the necklace she got for her birthday two years ago, and the watch Daddy sent her a few weeks back for Valentine's Day.

Appetizers are made, and wine is chilling. She'd even had time (had needed something to keep her busy) to prep a little extra salad and cut up some fruit - apples and pears - and pack them into the tupperwares currently gripped in her hands. It's not that she's feeling overly charitable, but mac and cheese on its own isn't a properly balanced meal for a growing boy, now is it?

She trots the few yards to John's place, shivering slightly in the cold as she climbs the steps and presses the doorbell (maybe she should've grabbed her coat, after all). A single bark from Tuck sounds from inside, and then the door is opening to a decidedly guilty-looking Robin.

"He's late," she tells him simply, doing her best to look annoyed and put-out.

"I know," Robin admits. "He's reading Roland a book while I get dinner started. They're just about on the last page."

Regina melts a little at that - at the thought of her son having storytime with his, so she nods and sighs, and holds out the plastic containers in her hand. "Then I suppose I got here just in time."

Robin frowns, looking at her offerings with confusion. "What's all this?"

"Salad. Fruit. Noodles and cheese are not a full meal," she lectures lightly. "That child needs some proper nutrition in his dinner."

He pulls a face, muttering, "I know how to feed my son," but he takes the tupperware nonetheless and asks, "Do you want to come in and wait, or shall I send Henry along as soon as he's finished?"

"I want him home in the next five minutes," she tells him, crossing her arms over her chest now that her hands are empty. "Assuming you can make that happen, I'll go."

"I think I can manage," he tells her tartly, and for a moment - just a moment - she feels bad for clearly having irritated him. She knows she's short-tempered and edgy, and he's simply an easy target. So she keeps her mouth shut and nods, bites back the impulse to tell him to see that he does, and turns to leave.

To her surprise, he stops her, says her name and has her turning back to face him with brows raised in interest.

"You look lovely tonight," he tells her earnestly, his irritation from a moment before seemingly pushed back, down, away. The compliment catches her off guard, has her smiling softly before she can help it, lifting a hand and tucking her hair back behind her ear. She knows why he's saying it, knows it's because of what she'd confessed about her mother earlier that afternoon, but it doesn't make her appreciate it any less. Maybe more, in fact.

So she tells him, "Thank you," and, "I hope you guys had a good day."

"We did," he assures her with a smile, lifting the food in his hands and adding, "Thank you for this."

"Of course," she murmurs, then she gives him a pointed look and reminds, "Four minutes."

His face splits into that wide, friendly grin that makes something somersault stupidly in her belly, and he laughs, nods his head. "Yes, of course. Go on."

She does, and this time he doesn't stop her.

She hears the front door open and shut with a soft bang a few minutes later as she's stashing her boots in her closet, and then Henry's voice calling up the stairs to tell her he's home.

**.::.**

He may have been late getting Henry back to his mother, but there's not a chance in hell that Robin will risk being late with Roland. In fact, he arrives early by a good quarter hour, pulling into his usual parking spot outside their building (her building, he reminds himself, despite his name still being on the lease for their apartment). He unclips Roland from his car seat, shoulders the boy's bag and then takes his hand, holding it as they climb the steps to the second floor. He lets himself into the building with his own keys, but when he reaches their apartment, he's not quite sure what to do. Does he knock? Does he let himself in? Roland still thinks he lives there with them.

Sure enough, he's reaching up and asking, "Daddy, I can turn it?" his little fingers patting the knob, expecting to turn the keys Robin has gripped in his other hand.

He clears his throat slightly and murmurs, "Of course, my boy," slipping his key into the lock and helping his son's little fingers give it a turn until the door opens with a click. Roland giggles and runs inside, Robin following after.

Marian comes in from the kitchen, looking startled and disapproving. Right, then. He's lost letting-himself-in privileges, it seems.

"Roland wanted to turn the key," he tells her as he shuts the door behind him - because this will not be just a drop off. He's not leaving his boy at the threshold and returning home alone without so much as a bedtime story. And he wants to talk to Marian - really talk to her - once Roland is down for the night, although he has no idea what he'll say.

Marian nods, something tight and sad in her expression as it shifts to Roland. "He usually does," she murmurs, and Robin feels suddenly awkward in his own home. He's lived here for years, and yet it all feels strange now. Like it's not his, like he doesn't belong. She's changed the cushions on the sofa, and rearranged the furniture - moved the sofa off the far wall like she'd always wanted to try (it looks better this way, she'd been right, of course she had).

For a minute, they just stand there, the two of them, silent and unsure, and then Robin sets Roland's bag on the floor nearby to the coffee table, and the boy looks at him from his perch on the couch, and scowls.

"Daddy, where's your bag?"

"My bag?" he asks, brow furrowing.

"From your trip!" Roland supplies, and Robin's heart twists and clenches. Roland thinks he's coming home. And he's the farthest thing from it. Roland's voice is bemused as he adds, "You forgot it."

Robin looks to Marian then, catches her gaze and looks hard at her, asking wordlessly if she's sure, if she's certain, if this is really what she wants. Because if it is, they've hit an impasse. He won't lie to his boy again, won't leave him to wonder why his father is gone again come morning, and he won't let Marian be the only one to tell him that his happy home is splitting apart either. He's missed enough of Roland's life these past few weeks, and he won't be absent for breaking his little heart, too.

Marian takes a deep breath and looks away, crouches in front of Roland and says, "Daddy is going to stay with Uncle John, baby."

Robin's stomach goes hot, then cold, and he fists his fingers when he feels them start to tremble, his legs carrying him numbly to the sofa cushion next to Roland's as the boy's face falls to confusion and he asks, "But why? Daddy lives here."

"Not anymore," Marian tells him, and if there's a hint of a tremble in her voice, well, good.

They should have discussed this before. How to tell Roland -  _what_  to tell Roland. This was selfish of them. They could cock it all up in a heartbeat.

Roland looks to Robin with wide, dark eyes, and asks, "Why not?" and Robin cannot help himself. He reaches for his boy and hauls him into his lap, faces him away from Marian, and rakes his fingers through dark curls before letting his palm rest at the back of his son's neck.

What on earth can he tell him? Daddy is a failure? Daddy ruined everything? Daddy, who you so admire, isn't worth a lick of your affection right now?

No, he can't do that. Maybe it's the truth, but he cannot say it. He goes for diplomacy instead, struggling for the right words and coming up with, "Sometimes… mummies and daddies… they stop getting along. And when that happens, sometimes it's better… for them to be apart for a little while."

"Robin," Marian murmurs, and he feels a flash of irrational anger toward her. He knows what she wants - that she wants him not to give Roland false hope of a reconciliation, but for God's sake, the boy is  _three_ , could she be a touch less cruel for just a moment? (She's trying not to be, he knows that, he can tell by the way she lifts a finger to wipe away a tear before it falls. She's hurting too, hurting deeply, on account of him and what he's done, on account of what their ending will do to Roland.)

"Sometimes it's best for them to be apart. To not live together anymore," he amends for Roland and the boy's eyes fill with tears that make Robin feel like utter shit.

Roland's lip trembles as he asks, "You're going 'way again?"

"No, my boy," Robin assures, lifting Roland until his knees curl under him. They dig into Robin's thighs as he shifts him so they're face to face, looking straight into those tearful eyes and swearing, "I'm not going away. Just to Uncle John's. It's not far, remember? Only a short drive. We'll still see each other all the time. All the time, I promise," he vows, because he will not let weeks go by again before he sees his son. He won't allow it, and if he has to force Marian's hand by promising he'll see him often, well, so fucking be it. He can accept that he'd committed an unforgivable offense against Marian, but he's done nothing to Roland. Nothing to hurt his boy, and he won't let Roland suffer any more than he has to for Robin's crimes.

"Tomorrow?" Roland whimpers, big, fat tears leaking from his eyes now as his breath hitches, and God, Robin's chest feels like it's being crushed with a vice. He's done this - this is his fault. If he'd just been honest, been righteous, his boy would not be in tears and his life would not be in shambles. He'd thought vomiting up the better part of a bottle of whiskey in a stranger's powder room had been his low point, but he'd been wrong. This is it. This, sitting here with his son in tears of his own causing, ripping his precious son's family into pieces, this is the worst of it. God, he hopes this is the worst of it.

"I don't think so, my boy," he tells him, his throat like a clenched fist, his voice tight. "But soon. Very soon."

"But I miss you," his son cries, crashing forward into Robin's shoulder and grasping at his neck with soft, pudgy arms. Robin's eyes squeeze shut, his own arms wrapping around Roland's little body, holding him tight and rocking as he feels his eyes prickle and wet with tears. "Don't go!"

He's angry again, then, furious at Marian for this. Because this  _isn't_  his doing, this separation; it's hers. She's decided this, she's kicked him out. His eyes crack open to glare balefully at her, and he shakes his head, grits his teeth. His only consolation is that her eyes are wet, too, her face a mess of heartbreak as she stares helplessly at their son's back. Robin buries his face into Roland's shoulder with a heavy exhale because he has nothing to say. No reassurances for his boy, no power to change all this and make the tears stop.

"I'm sorry, my boy," he whispers into his baby's soft skin, clutching him close and rocking him as he cries. "I'll see you again soon, I promise. I promise."

They stay that way for a minute more, and then Marian clears her throat and pushes to her feet, and says, "It's time for your bath, baby."

Roland will have none of it. Absolutely none. He refuses to let go, cries that he doesn't want a bath, he wants Daddy, and in the interest of buying more time with his son and trying to calm the boy before he dissolves into absolute hysterics, Robin tells Marian he'll handle bathtime.

It's a quick affair, though. Roland is still crying and miserable, doesn't want his toys, doesn't want the colored soap they often use to draw on his arms, his legs, the tiles. So Robin simply soaps and rinses, and then wraps the boy up in a big fluffy towel and carries him to his bedroom. And if he lingers there for nearly an hour, cuddling and talking and reading a story, if he stays until Roland finally cannot hold up his heavy eyelids any longer, that's his right as a father. He deposits him carefully in his bed and pulls his covers up to the shoulders of his Spider-Man pajamas, and for a few minutes more he just sits there and looks at him. At his child, his whole world, his brightest light. Traces gentle fingers through soft curls and memorizes every line and curve of his son's face.

He's surprised, honestly, that Marian hasn't come to boot him out yet.

When he finally emerges from the bedroom, she's on the sofa, still as a statue, a mug of tea in her hand. There are suitcases piled by the front door, and boxes, too. His things, he realizes with a punch of misery. So this is it, then.

The end of things.

"He's asleep," Robin mutters, and Marian finally moves then, nodding and unfurling her legs slowly, setting her mug on a coaster in front of her before she stands. "We broke his heart tonight."

"I know," she says quietly, and when she finally looks up at him, her eyes are red and puffy.

"Don't turn him against me," Robin whispers, afraid almost to voice it, because he knows as well as she does that she holds all the cards here. And it's not like her to be cruel, to be petty, to strike out, but he didn't think it was like her to leave either, and here they are. Both of them somehow strangers to each other after so long being allies, being lovers, being as close as one can be to a person. They're both uncertain now, both unsure, and he has to know that whatever bad blood there is between himself and Marian, it won't touch his relationship with Roland.

To his relief, she shakes her head, tells him, "I won't. I want him to have a father - his father - but, God, Robin, I want you to be better. For him."

"I will be," he swears. "I'm trying."

"I know."

"And I am truly sorry."

She shakes her head, tells him, "I know. But it doesn't change this."

"I want to see him this week," Robin pushes, because he's made a promise to his boy and he intends to keep it. "I want to see him  _every_  week. I need to be with him. I need to be in his life."

"We'll work it out," is all she replies, but it's not good enough. Not for him, not tonight.

"Promise me," he demands. "Promise me that I will see my son every week. Unless one of us is out of town, or – I want him weekly, Marian. I–"

"Alright," she interrupts, and the few feet between them feels like miles when she looks up to meet his gaze, her own weary and sad. "Weekly. But if you start to spiral again, if you start doing things like–"

"I won't."

"If you do," she continues pointedly, "I'm going to protect my son. Get your shit together, Robin, and you'll keep seeing him." She softens then, and her hand twitches out as if to reach for him, then falls back to her side, both of them moving to her pockets and sliding there, taking root. "I'm not heartless, Robin, I just don't want you to disappoint him. I know what it's like to have a dad who's just not… there, and I don't want that for him."

"I'm not your father," he tells her quietly. He doesn't have the heart to be mean over this, doesn't have the desire to at this particular moment. He won't twist knives in her wounds, but he needs her to know, "I'm not him, you know that. You're the one who kept me from our son, not me."

"I know," she murmurs, and then she sucks in a breath, stares at her mug as she admits, "And I'm sorry for that. But I needed time. I wasn't ready to see you."

"And now?"

She lifts her head, looks him in the eyes again.

"Now, you need to take your things, and go."

He does. It takes several trips to get all of his things into the car, and a sort of Tetris-style rearranging of bags until everything fits, but he manages. And then he drives away from his home, and his son, and the woman he'd thought just a week ago would still be in his life indefinitely. He drives… home, he supposes. John's place is home now, for lack of another.

And John is there when he arrives, helps him haul his bags and boxes from car to bedroom, and then sits on the couch with him while something mindless plays on the telly, a beer in both their hands.

He sips slowly, refuses John's offer for another, and goes to bed early.

**.::.**

Regina runs.

She runs until her heart is galloping, her body slicked with sweat, the steady rhythm of her sneakers against the treadmill drowned out by Grace Potter and the Nocturnals blasting at an irresponsible volume into her headphones. But it's not enough to drown out her own thoughts, her simmering resentment, her useless shame.

Her mother had been in fine form tonight from the minute she walked into the door (thirty minutes before she'd said they'd be there), and she echoes, echoes, echoes through Regina's head as she sweats and pants and pushes herself harder.

_Regina, dear, what is that on the wall? Well, why on earth would you need a security system in such a_ _**safe** _ _neighborhood? You could do so much better than this place…_

_Do you really think that shade of lipstick suits you, dear? And you really shouldn't wear cream, darling, it washes you out._

_Do you still have that hideous painting?_ (It had hung in Daniel's apartment in Boston, and now it's here in her hallway, and no, maybe it doesn't match perfectly, but, well, she keeps it nonetheless.)  _I thought you'd have replaced it with something better by now._

_Don't you think this blue makes the room feel a bit cold in the wintertime? The tan was so much warmer, dear._

(Thank God for her father, for his quiet rebuttals of everything that Cora says - he likes the blue, he thinks the sweater suits her nicely, he compliments her on her cooking and tells her in a fervent murmur to ignore her mother, that she's just unhappy it's been so long between visits and is taking it out on her. Regina wants to point out that if her mother was less like  _this_ , then perhaps they'd visit more often.)

_Honestly, you still keep a picture of yourself with that foolish man on the mantel? It's been eleven years, Regina. I guess it's a good thing you haven't been bringing men home - what would they think of a woman who can't let go of a man who's been dead for a decade?_

_The fish is lovely, dear._ (She'd almost had her with that one, had had Regina smiling softly, a flush of pride in her chest.)  _If a bit dry. You know, you have to be careful with tilapia, it's so easy to overcook._

_Oh no, no cookies for me. I'm still recovering from the holidays. Perhaps you should stick to one, dear, you know how easily the women in your father's family pack on weight._

_If Henry's having such a hard time with math, perhaps it's time for a tutor, darling._

That had been her last straw, the thing that had her declaring it was time for Henry to go take a shower before bed, that she didn't want him up too late. That they should head home. She can handle Cora, can deal with the comments, the belittling, the backhanded compliments. She's lived with them her whole life, but she will be damned if she lets Henry suffer the same.

And no, maybe math isn't his strongest subject, but she wouldn't say he's struggling, not any more than any child does when they simply don't have a head for numbers and facts and figures. Henry's a creative boy, a smart child, a reader, a dreamer. So he struggles a bit with long division, who cares? He's passing, and he's trying, and they're working through all of this together, and that's what matters. She will not - _will not_ \- let Cora shame her child over a C.

Even if she has considered a tutor, once or twice. Even if she does worry that he'll never pull that C up to a B like they're trying to do. Even if she frowned when she saw it, stark and ugly against all his A's and B's.

Those are her concerns, not Henry's and–

She nearly stumbles, startling hard at the sight of movement in her periphery. It's Henry, in his pajamas. He's supposed to be in bed. She had tucked him in a while ago, before she'd come down here to run herself dry, so the sight of him is jarring, disorienting. She punches the intensity down, down, down on the treadmill to slow her pace to a walk and yanks the headphones from her ears.

"Sweetheart, you're supposed to be in bed," she pants.

"I know," he admits with a grimace and, "I'm sorry. I couldn't sleep."

Regina nods, thinks she knows the feeling. She always has a hard time sleeping after a full evening of her mother, and, God, is Henry picking up that habit, too? She hopes he isn't. Hopes he lives a life free of sleepless nights, of restless anxiety. She's failing him, she thinks. If she can't find a way to raise him strong, and calm, and happy, she's failing him.

But then he admits, "I think I might've had too many cookies," and she realizes that no, it's a sugar high. A different sort of failure, perhaps, but a much milder one. "And that creepy car drove by again. The one that always goes really slow down the block. I saw it from my window."

Regina frowns, then asks, "Now how would you know that if you were trying to sleep?"

Henry's face goes guilty and sly, his shoulders shrugging. "I got bored?" he tries, and Regina can't help but chuckle at him. "I'm  _wide awake_ ," he sighs in excuse.

She should send him back to bed - she should - but it's the weekend, and it's not as though they need to be up early tomorrow. So she smiles at her son, and tells him, "Why don't we watch a movie before bed?", pleased at the way he perks up at the idea.

"Really?"

"Mmhmm," she replies, still a bit breathless from her workout. "You pick. I'll go shower, and be right back."

"Cool!" Then he gives her his best winning smile and asks, "Popcorn?"

It's late, far later than either of them should be eating, and she thinks of her mother again, of empty calories, of unnecessary carbs, of – No.

No, she will not let Cora steal any more time from her tonight, and she certainly won't let her steal any of Henry's joy.

So she nods, asks if he remembers how to make it himself. When he tells her he does, she sends him on his way and heads for the shower.

When she comes back fifteen minutes later in pajamas of her own, he's already on the couch, munching on popcorn from the bowl in his lap with the TV stopped on the DVD menu for  _The Sword in the Stone_. Regina smiles and settles down next to him, grabbing a blanket from the back of the sofa and spreading it across them before reaching for a handful of popcorn herself. It's buttery and delicious, and she tells herself she's allowed this, that she ran off plenty before Henry interrupted her.

"You ready?" he asks, lifting the remote and smiling at her.

"Ready," she confirms, and moments later the fanfare of the opening credits begins to sound.

Henry leans into her side, lets his head fall to her shoulder, and Regina lets her own tip against it.

Halfway through the movie, he is heavy against her, sound asleep, limp fingers hooked on the edge of the popcorn bowl. She could stop the movie, could carry him up to bed and maybe turn in early herself. But she doesn't. She stays where she is, watches the familiar scenes play out in front of her and tries very hard not to brood.


	7. Chapter 7

On Monday morning, Regina drinks her coffee black, grimacing slightly at the dark, bitter taste of it. But Henry had wanted waffles on Sunday, and of course she'd indulged him. Waffles where every nook and cranny had been filled with butter (real, because she's trying to avoid processed crap, and the organic butter tastes worlds better than margarine anyway), and covered in pure maple syrup, and of course they'd had bacon to go with it, and how does she explain to a ten-year-old why she's abstaining from the simple pleasure of bacon and waffles without validating the very same insecurities and neuroses she's trying to protect him from?

So she'd eaten a waffle (delicious, and sweet, and decadent) and two strips of bacon (salty and fatty and wonderful), and her usual coffee with cream (two cups, in fact), and when he'd requested pizza for dinner, she'd said yes to that, too, and had a single slice.

And then she'd made the mistake of stepping on the scale this morning to discover she'd gained a pound and a half, and she tells herself it is only a pound and a half, that it is nothing, negligible. That her clothes fit exactly the same as they did  _last_  Monday, and she has nothing to be insecure about. But still, she hears  _you know how the women in your father's family put on weight_  and conjures up faded memories of her paternal grandmother, of being six years old and sitting on Sofía's lap, cuddled up against her soft, pudgy midsection, and she feels a sort of gripping, shameful fear that she knows comes from her mother, and yet she cannot find a way to control it. Even now, in her thirties, she is Cora's daughter to the core, warped and molded expertly through years of what she can see now was manipulation, but she is powerless to its effects.

So today, she drinks her coffee black. Today, she will have salad for lunch, and make the grilled chicken breasts Henry likes for dinner, with heaps of roasted vegetables on the side. Maybe ratatouille, Henry likes the–

There are fingers snapping in front of her face suddenly, deep purple nails, and a thick silver ring with an onyx stone, and Regina jumps slightly at Mallory's, "Hey!", looking up to discover an entire conference table full of colleagues looking at her expectantly. "I don't know where you are, but the rest of us are in a status meeting if you'd like to join us."

She blinks, feels her chest flush slightly with embarrassment, and admits, "I'm sorry, I seem to have wandered off there for a moment."

"It's quite alright," Leo tells her in a gentle tone, and with a slight smile, steepling his fingers in front of himself. It's one of those times he looks at her like she's a silly girl, the way he used to look at her when she was young and he'd stop by for a business meeting with Cora. The way he looked at her when she sat in his office for the very first time at twenty-four, wearing a brand-new pantsuit and a smile more confident than she was really feeling after two years out of the job market. Benevolent, she thinks, but selfishly so. Like his own patience and understanding pleases him. "What's on your plate for TLK this week?" Leopold repeats, and Regina glances down at her notes, clears her throat and reads off the weekly to-do's. She has a meeting with creative for the print campaign, Sidney will be meeting with them to discuss the television and digital media platforms, and on and on down the list.

When the weekly status meeting breaks, it is Sidney who approaches her first, with a warm smile and a good-natured, "A lot on your mind this morning?"

She gathers pad, pen and phone together, hooking them into her elbow as she admits, "Long weekend," then dismisses the whole thing with a smile and, "But nothing worth sharing. You?"

"Nothing worth sharing," he parrots back to her, and then, "How would you feel about a working lunch? Maybe Doc's? We could go over the notes for the meeting tomorrow?"

Regina nods, because yes, they should touch base, but Doc's is all burgers and chicken fingers and half-wilted salads not worth what they charge for them. "Lunch I'm okay with, but perhaps somewhere a bit less… greasy."

"The Magic Bean it is, then," he replies knowingly, and this time she's grateful that Sidney has a mental catalogue of Things Regina Likes. It's a ten-minute walk, murder in the blustery winter, but The Bean serves what she thinks may be the best kale salad in all of Baltimore, and she never leaves feeling guilty or overly stuffed. Regina's not sure she'd call it comfort food, but it's certainly the one place she goes to eat when she needs to feel better about herself.

They end up at a table near the windows, midday sunlight pouring in to warm their wooden tabletop and reflect almost painfully off the pages of their respective notepads as Regina sips at water with lemon, and Sidney sucks cane-sweetened, house-made cola through a straw. They talk shop until their food arrives (that kale salad for Regina, and a black bean burger - The Magic Bean's house specialty - for Sidney), but somewhere amidst all the chewing, the conversation lulls. It lulls, and it stays that way, and it's not what Regina would call a comfortable silence.

He's watching her, the way he always does, and suddenly she's aware - hyper aware - very aware - of the way she takes every bite, the way she chews and swallows. The way her silk top is unbuttoned perhaps one more button than it ought to be for lunch with Sidney. Regina glances out the window to avoid his stare, watches the occasional passerby, squints at the music store across the street, at the sale sign in the window: HALF OFF ALL SHEET MUSIC, MONDAY AND TUESDAY ONLY!

She should stop in, she thinks… Maybe pick up something new to learn. Something to tinker with after Henry goes to sleep, or while he works on his homework. She thinks of Robin then, of sitting next to him at her piano, of his soft voice, and his thigh warm against hers, and she wonders if their silences would be awkward, too. Wonders if he'd be unable to resist the hint of cleavage amongst emerald silk. Wonders if he'd ever eat a kale salad, or if he'd wrinkle his nose at it the way Henry does. Wonders why she's wondering in the first place.

"So... did you watch Downton Abbey this weekend?"

Sidney's attempt at conversation is almost more awkward than the silence, if for no other reason than that she knows for a fact (had overheard as she passed the break room one afternoon) that the only reason Sidney watches Downton is so he can talk to Regina about it – ironic, considering she only really watches it so she knows what the hell Kathryn is always going on about. She'd gotten the first season almost entirely in Monday morning coffee time recaps, and it had been maddening trying to follow it all. So she'd given in, and now she's stuck with it, and so, it seems, is Sidney.

But it's better than silent staring, so she goes with it, and they spend the next few minutes trying to make conversation about something neither really cares about.

They fizzle out again and then he asks, out of the blue, "How's your family?"

She blinks. Lifts her eyes from her plate to his face. "My what?"

"Your family - you grew up near here, didn't you?" he asks, and she realizes he's trying to make small talk. He couldn't have chosen a worse topic. Of course, Sidney has no way of knowing that, so she forks another bite of salad, and nods.

"Yes, Glenwood." Her brow crinkles slightly as she asks, "I feel like we've talked about this before?"

"Probably," he smiles and shrugs, adding, "Refresh my memory. Brothers? Sisters?"

None, and he knows that, she thinks, her confusion deepening. He knows how she likes her coffee, and where she likes her lunch, and who her favorite author is, what brand of lotion she keeps tucked in her purse, but he's forgotten she's an only child? Are they really so starved for conversation that they're repeating themselves?

"No, just me," she replies, unable to resist the urge to mutter, "Unfortunately."

His brows lift slightly at that, and he asks, "Lonely or hoping for other canon fodder?"

Regina can't help it; she laughs. "That's one way to put it," she muses. "But yes. There's a lot of pressure when you're the only child, and nobody else to split the attention of overbearing parents." Before he can sympathize, she opens her hands and sits a little straighter, adding, "But if they hadn't been so overbearing, I probably wouldn't be so successful. So. I guess Mother was right, after all."

"Do you see them often?" he asks, reaching for his drink.

"Too often for me, not often enough for them," Regina tells him, pushing the last bits of salad around her plate. She's not hungry anymore, but Sidney still has a clutch of sweet potato fries to pick his way through before she can politely signal for the check.

"They should appreciate you more," he says to her and Regina frowns, sets down her fork and wraps her fingers around her water glass. "You are... very special, Regina."

"Sidney..." she murmurs.

"You are. You're smart, and beautiful, and determined. An invaluable asset to any team, and I know I've only met your son a handful of times, but I can see that you're a wonderful mother. If your parents can't appreciate you, then..." She takes a slow breath in, keeps her features carefully even. It's nice to hear. The compliments are nice, smoothing over some rough edge of hurt feelings left over from the weekend - even if she's fairly certain she could kick orphans and mulch puppies and Sidney would still think she hung the moon. That even his validation soothes her has her kicking herself. She's being weak. Childish. Attention-seeking. "Well, then, they're the ones missing out."

She's not sure what to say to that, so she lifts her glass and gulps and swallows. In the end, she settles on, "Thank you. That's very kind."

"I speak only the truth," he smiles at her, and then he reaches forward, toward the hand still holding onto her glass between them, but Regina draws back, straightening her napkin and telling him they really should get back to work before Leo gives them hell for neglecting their workload.

It's an empty excuse - these working lunches aren't uncommon for them, not really, and even if Leo weren't fond of Regina, he's overly so of Sidney. They could sit here till two and not catch hell.

But she's ready to go, and he's ready to oblige her, so he signals for the check.

When he refuses to let her pay even so much as the tip, she scowls, argues that there's no reason she can't pay her share.

"Why should either of us pay?" he reasons, pulling a company AmEx out of his wallet and tucking it into the folder with the bill. A smirk tugs at the corner of Regina's mouth and she nods, lifts her brows in acquiescence. "This was a working lunch, after all."

"Fair point," she murmurs in agreement, mollified by the fact that he wasn't trying to make this into a lunch date.

They go their separate ways when they return to the office, and Regina doesn't see Sidney again until he stops to wish her a good evening on his way out at the end of the day.

**.::.**

"Hey English," Ruby calls as she ducks behind the bar and starts to enter a ticket into the computer. "I need two Sams, a Blue Moon, and a whiskey ginger."

Robin nods, tells her, "Coming right up, Red," and reaches for clean pint glasses.

It's slow tonight at the Rabbit Hole, only two tables occupied and another pair at the bar, but then, it's early. Not quite what Robin would call the dinner rush just yet, and he's hopeful things will pick up once they get a bit further from the end of the workday. He's just thinking about how much he hopes their present customers are at least going to be good tippers when the door swings open, letting in a gust of chilly night air and perhaps the last person he expects to see.

Marian.

Marian, on her own, sans Roland, still in her work clothes, one hand clutching the strap of the purse slung over her shoulder. She glances around for a moment, taking the place in, and Robin is so distracted at her sudden and unannounced appearance that he nearly overflows the pint of Blue Moon he's pouring. He scrambles to right the tap, shakes a slosh of beer off his fingers and wonders what the hell she's doing here.

When he glances up again, she's walking toward the bar, walking toward him, shoulders straight and face pinched with… discomfort? Dread? Anxiety? He can't quite tell, and he wonders when he got so poor at reading her. Or maybe she's just gotten better at hiding her feelings.

"Hi," she greets, and it sounds like regret. She's at the bar now, between two stools, but she doesn't sit. Doesn't even set her purse down, just presses her palms to the bar's edge and awaits his greeting in reply.

Which he gives, of course, a vaguely startled, "Hello," and then, "This is a surprise."

She breathes in, out, nodding, then says, "I was on my way home from work, and… I was wondering if we could talk for a minute?"

 _Here?_ , he wants to ask. And,  _Now?_  But he's a bit at her mercy at the moment - she holds his access to Roland in one palm, holds the proof of his illicit deeds in the other. He supposes it doesn't do to try and ruffle feathers at such a benign request.

And they  _are_  slow tonight, so…

He nods, tells her, "I've a break coming up. Just let me finish these drinks." Marian nods, and then simply stands there awkwardly while Robin reaches for a bottle. He glances up as he mixes the whiskey ginger, asking, "Can I get you anything?"

She shakes her head, mutters, "No, I'm fine," and then seems to think better of it as she notices, "Is that Strongbow on tap?"

Robin nods, offers again, "On the house, if you'd like."

"I'm driving," she reminds, and then, "Maybe a half?"

Robin smirks, amused at watching her resolve undone by a good cider, and says, "Of course, babe," before he can catch himself.

The endearment tumbles off his tongue as natural as breathing, something he's called her for years. Called anyone he feels a bit of affection for, to be honest, but it seems out of place now. And sure enough, her gaze flicks down to the mahogany under her fingers as she murmurs just loud enough for him to hear, "I'm not your 'babe' anymore, Robin."

His response is a quiet, "Yeah," a dismissive sort of thing as he sets three beers and a whiskey ginger on a tray for Ruby and reaches for a small glass and the Strongbow. He watches amber liquid fill the glass instead of watching her, feeling as ever like a puppy that's gotten his nose whapped with a newspaper. As if he needs reminding that they're not in a pet name sort of place as he stands in this bar pouring drinks on a Monday night instead of sitting at him with Marian and his son, watching telly and talking about Roland's adventures at daycare.

He sets the drink on the bar in front of Marian, then tells Ruby he's taking fifteen as she comes to retrieve her drink order. She glances at Marian, then nods, tells him she's got everything under control.

Robin rounds the bar, then, and beckons Marian toward a quiet corner table, far enough from the other patrons that speaking in hushed tones will give them nearly full privacy. She sips her cider, and he attempts to sit patiently, wishing immediately that he'd poured a drink for himself. He's nothing to do with his hands but fiddle with his thumbs, and even a Coke would have given him a straw to stir, a coaster to pick at.

After two sips, she seems to steel her resolve, taking in a deep breath and telling him, "We need to talk."

"So you've said," Robin answers, and he doesn't meant it to come out tartly, but somehow it does. So he clears her throat and digs his thumb into a nick in the tabletop, asking a bit more kindly, "What about?"

"Roland. He needs…" She glances down at the tabletop, twisting her mouth like she's rolling words over her tongue, before finally ripping off the Band-Aid: "Children aren't cheap. And I don't think I have to tell you how much we barely scrape by on what I make alone. That's how we got into this mess in the first place."

He might've bit back something about how well aware he is of that fact if it wasn't dawning on him that she's here to ask him for money. Something of which he has precious little - has just started earning again in these last few weeks, and he's fairly drowning in unpaid bills, and he probably ought to be paying some sort of keep to John now that he lives there properly...

"You want to be a dad-"

"Don't talk about me like I'm some deadbeat father," he interrupts then, because, "This narrative you've built yourself about how I'm unfit for Roland because I did a very wrong thing… It's trash, Marian. I've been nothing but a good father to that boy for three whole years, and you've never had cause to complain before now." Robin leans in a little, plants his pointer finger on the tabletop. "I understand that I did wrong, and I understand that I did wrong  _by you_ , and I'm sorry for that. But I've done nothing to Roland. I've done nothing worthy of things like 'if you want to be a dad.' I  _am_  his dad. And I've been that for years, and gladly, and perhaps I'm not the most upstanding moral example for him but I have never not provided, and I have never not supported him, and I have never not loved our boy. So I'd appreciate if you'd not act as though one bloody stupid crime has suddenly changed me into a shit father."

So much for not ruffling feathers, he thinks, but if there's one thing he won't stand for it's a rewrite of his relationship with Roland. That has his dander up, has him angry, has his jaw tense even if his voice is still quiet enough to be between them.

Marian at least has the decency to look begrudgingly contrite, admitting, "Okay. You're right. You've been a good father, but…" She looks at him, shakes her head, her voice bewildered and defeated when she tells him, "I don't know, Robin, ever since this happened, looking at you is like looking at a stranger. I never thought you could do something like… what you did."

"You knew I wasn't exactly a model youth," he points out, because he certainly hadn't been, and Marian is well aware of his delinquent past. Hell, she's laughed at his exploits more often than not, when he's regaled her with tales of them over the years.

"Yes, but I thought you'd grown up," she retorts, ignoring him when he mutters that he has. "And anyway, that's neither here nor there. What's done is done, and now we have to figure out how this works going forward. You want to be in Roland's life, and I think that's best. For everyone. He should have his dad. But… There's daycare, and groceries, and rent that I now have to pay all by myself-"

"You're not seriously about to ask me to split the rent on the apartment you kicked me out of, are you?" Robin deadpans, and Marian clenches her jaw, takes a deep swig of cider.

"It would be different if we still had savings, but, well, you gave all of our savings to Will," she points out with a certain amount of accusatory disdain. "So now, I'm pretty much broke. And I'd like back the money you stole from me."

"Excuse me?" Robin asks, his brows lifting to his hairline.

"That money, those savings, they were  _ours_ , not yours," she tells him. "You had no right to just decide to empty the account without so much as a word to me. That was our cushion, and now it's gone. And I'd like my half of it back."

"And where exactly would you like me to come up with fifteen hundred dollars, Marian?" he asks her, because this is more than just asking for something like child support. This is even more money out of pocket, and can she not  _see_  that his job isn't exactly lucrative?

"You're working now," she tells him with a shrug. "I don't need it all at once, but we both know that I put more money into that account than you did over the years, and I don't think I'm being unreasonable here. And I know John won't make you pay rent, so the way I see it, you can afford to support your son and give back what you took."

Robin stares at her, at the set of her jaw, the determined look in her eyes. Marian is no wilting flower and never has been, has always been tenacious, has always fought for what she believes is right. It's one of the things he's always admired about her, but right now it's biting him in the arse. Or the paycheck, rather. And she's right - John won't  _make_  him pay rent, and she  _did_  put more money into their savings over the years than he did, and as Roland's father, he  _is_  responsible for making sure the boy is fed, and clothed, and cared for. And he shouldn't have lent money away without asking her. He doesn't have much of a leg to stand on here, so he blows out a breath and gives in.

"I'll put a hundred dollars a week into the savings - that is, if you haven't cut me off entirely from the accounts." She mutters that she hasn't, that that's fine. "And let me know what Roland needs. I can watch him in the daytime, you know," he reminds and not for the first time. "Save on daycare."

But Marian shakes her head, denying him as she has every other time, telling him, "He has friends there, Robin. He likes to go. And I… I need to not see you every day," she admits, the honesty both welcome and burning.

"That's selfish."

"Maybe. But it's the way things are right now." He latches onto that "right now" perhaps more than he ought to, taking it as a kernel of hope that somehow this could change. Not things with Marian, he's accepted that that's ended (and frankly, the more he sees of her lately, like this, the less interest he has in reconciliation himself), but perhaps an easier time of things where Roland is concerned. Then Marian glances at her watch and says, "I need to go pick him up, and I'm sure you need to get back to work. I'll bring him by this weekend, just let me know your schedule."

"I will," Robin tells her, and he stays where he is as she rises and shoulders her purse again, then heads for the door. Stays there another minute longer, taking a few long pulls from the glass of cider she'd hardly touched and disparaging the fact that just as it seemed he was getting his feet under himself again, something had managed to come along to shake his footing.

"If you're done drinking, there's work to do," Ruby startles him out of his stupor, as she sidles up to the table and plants a hand on her hip. She's looking down at him, but not looking down  _on_  him - in fact, he thinks he sees a bit of sympathy in the softness of her scowl, the lightness of her words.

"Sorry," he says softly, pushing his chair back with a screech of wood on floor and rising.

"That the babymama?" she asks, casually blunt as she follows him back to the bar, and then off his nod, "Do we hate her?"

Robin huffs a soft chuckle at that, appreciative of the offer of solidarity but not quite willing to indulge it. "I've been more fond of her than I am today, that's for sure, but no."

She shrugs, and then her attention is caught by a trio coming in through the door and she waves in acknowledgement before throwing Robin a quick, "Let me know if there's anything I can do to help."

"Don't suppose you'd want to give up one of those Thirsty Thursdays?"

She laughs at that, shaking her head and telling him not a chance, that she'd meant more along the lines of if he ever needed a drinking buddy to drown his sorrows. But he's done enough drowning, he thinks, and more than enough drinking. And then she's off and Robin is left to refill the glasses of his patrons along the bar.

**.::.**

There are days that Regina stays late at work - days she lingers in the office until well after the sky goes dark, lost in her work, trusting that Henry will be fine in Mary Margaret Blanchard's classroom after school. She's been Henry's sitter since she was a college freshman, since the day a horribly flustered Regina came to work toting a feverish two-year-old, unable to leave him with her parents for the day, unable to leave him at daycare while he was sick, and unable to miss work because, well, she'd only been there a month and she was supposed to sit in on an important meeting that afternoon.

So she'd brought him with her, hadn't known what else to do. She'd figured she'd watch him in her office while she worked and hope that someone, anyone, could just keep an eye on him during the meeting, and then maybe afterward Leo would let her work from home for the rest of the day. As luck would have it, Mary Margaret had had breakfast with her father just that morning, and had come back to the office with him afterward. Leo's reaction to his newest hire showing up with a toddler on her hip had been… less than enthusiastic, but Mary Margaret had taken one look at Henry's sweet, miserable face and cooed sympathetically. And even better, she'd had no classes that day, and had been more than willing to watch Henry, had practically insisted upon it, babbling on and on about how much she loved children, how she was studying elementary education, how he was just such a darling little boy.

Regina hadn't had a better option - and she'd been loathe to reject the boss' daughter.

It has worked out well all around - Henry had loved her (still does), and she'd proven herself a competent caregiver over the years. She's available on short notice, she can cook well enough, and she's smart, if a bit… chatty. And now she teaches first grade at the private school Henry attends, and serves as after-school babysitter from the convenience of her own classroom.

So Regina knows that from time to time, she can dawdle a bit after work. Can stay in the office, or run a few errands without a ten-year-old trying to cajole her into buying things that aren't on her list. Today is one of those days.

She's at the music store - the one with the half-off-sheet-music sale - and Mary Margaret has graciously offered to drop Henry off at home and even take care of dinner if she has to, so Regina can "get some shopping done." She'll go to the bookstore, too, she thinks. Pick up a few things for Henry, maybe one of the latest bestsellers for herself. Might stop off to replace the night cream she's running low on, and tampons - she's out of tampons.

But for now… For now, she's standing here in front of racks upon racks of music and songbooks, trying to figure out what the hell to buy. It's been a while since she's actually purchased music, actually learned from sheet music and not just picked out the things she likes by ear, and she's not quite sure which way to go here. There are books -  _The Great American Songbook_ , and  _The Disney Collection_  (she grabs that one on a whim, in the hopes that maybe Henry will like it, that maybe she can teach him how to plunk his way through "The Bare Necessities" or something similar - something more interesting than the  _Beginner's Piano Book_  they have at home), and an impressive collection of Broadway selections for piano and voice (she thinks of Kathryn as she skims past  _AIDA_  and  _Once_  - takes that last one for herself after thumbing through it and deciding some of it looks promising), and there are artist anthologies - everything from Manilow to Zeppelin. She chooses Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison, Norah Jones and Sara Bareilles, and soon her "just popping in to grab a few things" has her wishing she'd gotten a basket, because she hasn't even made it to the more traditional music yet, and she knows that despite her ire at her years of training, she won't be able to leave there empty-handed.

Sure enough, she picks up Debussy and Chopin, Puccini and Wagner, Mendelssohn and Verdi, Bach and Beethoven. Everything she'd loathed as a teenager suddenly has her fingers itching, and this is ridiculous. She's never going to have time to play all this, and some of it is now well beyond her rusty skill set (some of it she's fairly certain she already has at home, but it's like a compulsion, this need to snatch up every scrap of her inner musician and bring them home with her, tape them back together again, give them a good workout). It will take time, and practice, and she has a child, and a job, and… And she grabs that  _Great American Songbook_  on her way back toward the register, too, and a book of Ragtime solos to round out the set.

She's shaking her head as she checks out, wondering who she's trying to impress, what childhood wound she's trying to lick, but she hands over her credit card, and throws the bag into her back seat before heading for the bookstore, Sephora, Target, and then home.

**.::.**

Marian is not the only visitor Robin has on Monday night. John stops in for a bit of dinner as well. The place is busier then, and much as he'd like to take a few pints to that same corner table (presently occupied by a couple on what Robin is increasingly certain is a painfully awkward first date) and unload all his frustrations about Marian, he's limited to broken patches of conversation in between serving those at the counter and preparing the drink orders from Ruby's tables.

But still, they manage.

Not more than two minutes after John is seated at the bar, Robin makes his way over with a menu and a sigh. "Marian was here," he tells his friend in lieu of a hello, and John simply lifts bushy brows and looks at his dinner options. Robin has no idea why the man even bothers with the menu, he'll get a bacon cheeseburger with extra cheddar, an order of fries and enough barbeque sauce to drown a small country to dip them in. And he'll take it with a pint of Shock Top. Just as he's done every other time he's stopped in to grab dinner at the Rabbit Hole.

"How'd that go?" John asks, before placing the exact order Robin predicted he would.

"About as well as you'd expect." Robin moves away then, punching in the order and drawing the pint before heading back to John. When his friend asks what Marian had wanted, he runs his thumb along the edge of the bartop and admits quietly, "She wants money."

John's brows go up again, disbelieving. "From you?"

He chases it with a chuckle, and Robin feels the same bubble up in him as well, finds himself shaking his head with a laugh mostly devoid of amusement. "Yes, from me," he tells John, "Apparently I've given off the impression that I'm simply rolling in cash."

"What'd she ask for?"

Robin jerks a shoulder and admits, "She wants me to pay back half of the money I lent to Will - who, by the way, I feel I ought to shake down for his bloody share. I could give her all the sodding money if he'd just pay me back."

"He's working again, too," John points out. "Ask."

Robin has half a mind to, it would save him some financial strain. But just this moment, he's being flagged down by a customer, a pretty woman with ginger curls who is pointedly waggling her empty wine glass. So it'll be a third merlot for her, then. He hopes the fact that she's not American won't mean she's a shit tipper. While he's delivering her drink, he asks if he can get her anything else - fries, potato skins, cheese sticks, anything he thinks has a chance of sopping up the wine she's been guzzling, but she simply waves him away with a dismissive grimace and wave of her fingers. Right. What a charmer.

And then he's drinks to fill for Ruby - two Cokes, a Diet, and a seltzer with lime. Scotch, neat. Bourbon, rocks. A bay breeze. Someone a few seats down the bar asks for a second Negroni. By the time he makes his way back to John, the man's already got his food and a nearly empty pint.

"She's not entirely in the wrong," John tells him reluctantly as he dunks a fry, picking up right where they left off. "You should pay her back."

"I know she's not wrong," Robin near grumbles. "I should never have lent Will the money in the first place. I didn't think we'd need it - but then I suppose the point of a rainy day savings is so it's there when you need it unexpectedly, isn't it?"

"Sort of the point, yeah."

"And she's also asked me to help financially with Roland, which is fair, he's my son, and I'm glad to do it, it's just…" He's loathe to admit this, but John already knows it, knows it better than anyone, and if he can't be honest with his best friend, who can he give the truth to? "I'm just barely above skint as it is, trying to catch up with everything I let drop, and… I feel like shit, John. This whole thing makes me feel like something to be scraped off the bottom of a shoe."

"You'll get back above water," John reassures. Robin wants to believe him, even if the landscape looks bleak at the moment. "And if you need a loan in the meantime-"

"No," Robin cuts him off. "Absolutely not. I've taken over your home, eaten your food, and I know you've bills to pay too. I won't have you in the poorhouse because I was an idiot. But it might be a few months before I can start paying you any sort of proper rent."

"I don't need rent," John dismisses. "I need toilet paper. You finished the roll last night."

Robin grimaces, asking, "That was the last one? I can try to nick some from the toilets here..."

John snorts and shakes his head. "The last thing we need is you getting canned for stealing the T.P. I'll stop on my way home. But I mean it - I've already told you, you're welcome to stay there as long as you need. Just get groceries every now and then and try not to leave half the lights on when you leave the house; I think you can handle that."

Robin nods, says that he can. Of course he can.

"You're moving in the right direction, brother, just keep going," John encourages. "Your luck will turn around soon."

"I doubt that," Robin mutters, because if there's anything he's learn this past, oh, half a year or so, it's that things can always get worse, and for him it seems they will. "I just want to be someone my son can be proud of."

"He already is," John tells him casually, without hesitation.

And Robin supposes he's right, Roland doesn't seem to think terribly ill of him, but then, well, "He's three; he doesn't know any better."

"Then I'd take advantage of that and get your shit together," John advises, lifting his beer and downing the last of it before adding, "Roland never has to know how much you fucked up. And in the meantime, get me another one of these."

He slides the empty glass toward Robin, who takes it and refills it.

They switch the topic of conversation to John's work, and the woman there he's got eyes for, and Robin is grateful for the reprieve.

**.::.**

Regina skips dinner.

It's nearly eight by the time she gets home, and Henry has already eaten with Mary Margaret (she thanks the teacher for taking the extra time, chuckles at the younger woman's joke about just "adding it to Regina's tab" even though she doesn't find it nearly as funny as Mary Margaret does, then assures her she can handle the rest of homework and bed, she's free to go). And her hunger is… there, but not intense. She'll eat later, she tells herself - after she looks over that homework, and after she gives Henry his new books. She'll have something light, and then tomorrow she will eat like a healthy person again.

She promises herself that - that these extreme reactions to Cora's needling don't last longer than a day at a time. One day of near-fasting, and then she has to shake it off. Has to push through it. Has to try to see herself through the lens of reality, not the lens of parental criticism.

But tonight, she can indulge that nervous, neurotic part of herself, so she makes herself tea and takes it into the living room, lifting up her piano bench and stashing her new books inside amongst the other well-creased sets and bent-cornered primers. She takes out the  _Beginner_  book, and leaves the  _Disney_  and the  _Great American Songbook_ , propping them all on the piano and baring the keys, setting herself on the bench.

She tinkers with the  _Songbook_ , picks her way through "You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To." She'd always liked Cole Porter, had found him… soothing. Romantic. Mother hadn't been a fan - he wasn't showy enough, was too pedestrian, didn't require enough work, enough diligence. But Mother isn't here, and Mother can dislike it all she wants, Regina is playing for herself now. So she presses the keys, lingers where she wants, hums along stiltedly as she learns the notes and chords.

By the time Henry trots down the stairs, homework clutched in hand, she has the song as good as memorized.

He sets his papers next to the propped-open Songbook and asks, "What're you playing?" as Regina stills her fingers and lets them slip from the keys.

"Cole Porter," she tells him, scooting a bit off center, and patting the bench next to her to invite him to sit with her. Henry slides in beside her as she shuts the book and reaches for the Disney. "The music store by the office was having a two-for-one sale, so I thought I'd get a few things." She holds the book out for him and asks, "What do you think?"

His brows rise slightly, mouth tipping into an interested sort of frown. "Cool. Can you play these?"

"I can learn," she shrugs, adding, "But I thought maybe you'd want to learn them together. I could teach you…" She guides the book in his grasp, turning it over to show him the song listings. "There has to be something here you'd like."

The book is missing a lot of the newer titles, but it's current up to  _The Little Mermaid_ , and it's not as though Henry is unfamiliar with the Classic Disney movies. They have a rather extensive collection littering the shelves in the TV room. She knows he likes  _The Jungle Book_  and  _101 Dalmatians,_ and  _Mary Poppins._  But he doesn't light up the way she hopes he will. Instead, his face screws up just a little, a tiny grimace, like he doesn't want to admit how unenthused he is by the idea.

But Regina's not his mother for nothing; she reads the look immediately, and pushes down hard against the pang of disappointment and rejection that bubbles in her gut. She won't force him. She won't be Cora.

"Yeah, maybe," he tells her, not nearly convincing. But then he looks at her, and smiles his sweet smile and asks, "But can you play some now?"

Regina's smile echoes his, and it even mostly reaches her eyes. "Just one," she tells him, "And then I'll look over this homework while you get ready for bed."

He nods, and picks his song, and Regina sight-reads as best she can.

Would she like him to take an interest in learning for himself? Yes. But she'll take this - the opportunity to sit with him and make her way through "The Bare Necessities" (does she know him, or what?), giggling with each other as she stumbles slightly through the unfamiliar notes, shoulders and elbows bumping playfully. And maybe she doesn't get him to learn anything himself, maybe he barely even touches the keys, but that doesn't mean they can't share the music for a little while.

One songs becomes three becomes five, and as he heads off to brush his teeth, she brings his homework to the kitchen table, and fixes herself a sandwich. Turkey and provolone on whole wheat, with spinach and a couple of pre-sliced pickles, a generous portion of mayo. She's three bites in before she remembers she'd meant to skip dinner.

She pauses and stares down at the sandwich, swallows her mouthful of food. But she feels lighter now, more settled, so instead of pitching what's left of it, she takes another generous bite and reaches for Henry's French worksheet.

She'll eat however the hell she wants.


	8. Chapter 8

Saturday, it finally begins to warm. The sun is out shining brightly, and temperatures creep up into the fifties. So after a morning of tearing through both Henry's clothes and hers looking for things that are fit for Goodwill, Regina interrupts his latest game of Space Paranoids and insists on taking things outside.

"Alright, mister," she says, after knocking on Henry's door and poking her head into the room. "I'm not letting you sit inside on this gorgeous day. How about a picnic lunch in the park?"

He looks up from his game and smiles. "Sure! Maybe we can get John to let us take Tuck!"

Regina grimaces. "And spend the afternoon fighting him off our chicken bones? I don't think so." Henry slumps a little, twists his mouth, his nose scrunching in a way her daddy always insists he's inherited from her. After his muttered,  _Fine,_  she gives him fifteen more minutes to finish his game and get ready, and heads down to pack their lunch. She nukes what's left over from last night's baked chicken, bags baby carrots and and slices up apples, fills a little tupperware with peanut butter, and a ziploc with sliced cheese and crackers. She packs water bottles for both of them and zips everything into an insulated picnic bag, tucking away her new paperback as well, just in case Henry runs into one of the other neighborhood kids and abandons her for a while.

It's warm enough that she doesn't argue when Henry neglects to grab a jacket for over his hoodie, but she does insist on a hat, and grabs a scarf for herself as well. Then she tugs on boots and buttons herself into a thick cardigan instead of her usual peacoat. The walk to the park is short, just a few blocks away, and when they get there, Regina is glad she dug up the picnic blanket with its waterproof lining instead of just grabbing whatever was near, because the ground is soggy and damp.

They spread out their blanket and Henry stretches out on top of it, his body covering more of it than it had just last summer, and Regina feels a pang in her heart at another reminder of how he's growing up. Soon, he'll be less inclined to picnics in the park, and hanging out with Mom... But that's then, and this is now, so she gives one splayed foot a nudge with her toes and laughingly tells him to make some room for her.

They eat, and he tells her about something that had happened at school on Tuesday, something he'd forgotten to tell her earlier, and Regina absorbs the sound of his voice, and the warmth of the sun, the salty sweet taste of the peanut butter she may or may not have just licked delicately off an apple wedge. The air smells like spring. Like melted snow and new growth, and for a moment Regina feels perfectly content. There is nowhere she would rather be than here, in this place, with her son.

And then there's loud barking from the nearest park entrance, and the excited squeal of a toddler after it, and Regina looks over in time to see Tuck and Roland scampering into the park, Robin trailing after them, watching his son with a grin that makes Regina's heart stutter. God, he's attractive.

Not that that matters.

"Robin!" Henry exclaims excitedly, and then he gives her a reluctant look and asks, "Can I go play with the dog, Mom?"

Regina smirks, rolls her eyes, and acquiesces. "Go."

Now it's her turn to stretch out, unfolding her legs and moving to her belly, reaching for her book and opening it to the page she has marked. Every now and then she glances up to keep tabs on Henry, and finds him just a few yards off, running around with Roland and the dog, tossing a ratty old tennis ball for Tuck to fetch and bring back, at some point they procure a frisbee from God only knows where, and Henry and Robin take turns passing it back and forth while Tuck and Roland race between them trying to catch it before Henry bends to show Roland how to throw it himself. He's about as good at the task as a three-year-old is expected to be, most of his throws landing about four feet in front of him, eagerly picked up by Tuck who brings them back gamely. It has Regina smiling, has her watching more than reading, until she glances to Robin and catches him watching her.

She flicks her gaze down to her book, then, reading a paragraph she's already read at least three times and trying not to notice the easy gait of boots wandering into her periphery.

**.::.**

Robin supposes it's not really his place to invite himself onto her blanket, to invade her personal space and her little bit of solitude in the park, but, well, he imagines she didn't come here just to read. And frankly, chasing around after two young boys and a dog has tired him out. And he's noticed her watching the three of them more than once now, so she must not be too invested in that paperback.

So he goes, tells the boys to stay where he and Henry's mum can see them, and says he's going to go sit for a moment, old man as he is. Roland's taken quite a liking to the older boy, so he doesn't mind the reprieve from his father's attention in the slightest, and Henry seems pleased enough to play with dog and toddler.

Robin takes in the sight of her as he approaches, dressed down today in jeans and boots, a thick wooly coat the color of oatmeal. Hair down and shining in the sun, the bright natural light bringing out the brown in what is usually near-black. She is dutifully reading now, focusing hard on the page as if they hadn't made eye contact a minute before. But they had, and she'd been smiling pleasantly. She looks… soft, today. Inviting.

Like perhaps she won't be all knowing glares and sharp tongue, so he sinks down on the edge of her picnic blanket with a pleasant groan and splays his legs out onto the grass in front of him, leaning back onto his palms and tipping his face up to the sun. For a moment, he shuts his eyes and just enjoys the orange glow against his eyelids, the welcome return of warmth to the bleakness of winter.

Then he asks, "Good book?"

Regina hums a response, not really a yes or a no.

Robin tips his head forward, open his eyes, and tilts his head to read the title.  _The Secret Life of Bees_. "They made that into a movie, didn't they?"

Regina exhales, not quite a sigh and not quite annoyed, but she shuts the book anyway and lifts her head to squint over at their sons (they're tossing the tennis ball for Tuck now, the frisbee lost somewhere in the grass, it seems). "It looks like Roland has gotten over his fear of the dog," Regina says mildly, changing the subject.

Robin goes with it, nodding. "That he has. He's once again decided that Tuck is his 'bestest dog friend in the whole world.'"

He watches as her lips twitch into a smirk, her head bobbing slightly, and he finds himself thinking about how lovely she is. He's not been alone with her since everything went to shit with Marian, and she is absolutely the last person he ought to be thinking such things of, considering his sordid past with her parents, but there's no harm in a man looking, is there? Marian is over and done, and he's free to admire as many pretty women as he likes. So today, right now, he’s going to admire this one. This one, dark and beautiful. Eyes like coffee, and lips soft and pink, tinted with something but not really painted (her whole look is softer today, just the barest hint of color on her eyes, a coat of mascara on her lashes, those lips). He wonders if whatever gloss or balm she’s used is flavored, wonders what it tastes like. What she tastes like. (Bad form, Robin. Don’t stray so far down that road…)

For a moment, he’s enraptured by the slope of her nose, the curve of her chin, but then she turns her face to him and spies the way he’s staring at her, her expression going guarded. “What?” she asks sharply, the only hint of self-consciousness the way she is now tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. 

Robin shrugs, the very picture of innocence, and tells her, “Oh, just wondering how a woman can be even more fetching without all the makeup than she is with it.” 

She rolls her eyes at that, and he’d expected her to, had meant for a little shameless flirtation to break the moment of tension. 

“Smooth,” she drawls, shaking her head and shifting on her elbows. Robin chuckles and she scowls up at him. “And for the record, I _am_ wearing makeup.” 

“Less than I’ve seen you in before,” he reasons. Even on the weekend days he’s seen her, she’s always been in darker colors. “You look nice, is all.” 

Regina sighs, and starts to say, “If you’re thinking I’m going to be your rebound-”

"I'm not," he assures her, and he means it, absolutely. He has no intention of pursuing Regina Mills just to end up having to keep secrets from her. He's living proof of just how poor that sort of thing works out. "Just a little harmless flirtation on a nice day. I can take it back if you'd like."

She lifts one brow, asks him, "Was it a lie?"

"No. You're a beautiful woman."

Her "So I've been told," is a low, muttered thing that speaks of perhaps being told more often than she'd like to hear, and suddenly he feels guilty.

So he jerks a shoulder and confesses, "You caught me staring, I had to think on my feet."

"And that tired line was the first place your feet brought you?" she questions, and Robin snorts and scoffs, tells her that he'll have her know that was no tired line. Just a compliment he thought might be appreciated, that's all. "What I appreciate is honesty," she tells him, and Robin feels another pinch of guilt and dread. He can never be honest with her, not truly, not unless he wants to risk whatever reaction she might have to the truth of his crimes. He shouldn't be flirting with her, should never have flirted with her.

But it seems he can't help himself, because she's said she prefers honesty and now he finds himself being overly so: "Well, then I suppose I must admit you caught me wondering what your lip balm tastes like."

She fights away a smirk, he watches her purse her lips against it and look across the park again, dark eyes searching out their boys. Her answer is dry and dismissive: "Passionfruit."

He "Ah"s and then changes the subject to something more benign: "Henry's certainly fond of that dog."

Regina lets out a frustrated sigh and shifts next to him, pushing back until she's on her knees, and for a second he thinks she's going to up and leave him, but she just settles onto her rear, mirrors him with legs stretched in front of her but ankles crossed, and leans back onto her hands as well. Then, finally, she says, "He really, really is. Frankly, I'm starting to be glad John lets Henry spend so much time with him. It keeps him from asking  _me_  for a dog."

"Not a fan?"

"I've never been much of a pet person. Mother would never have allowed them growing up - animals in the house? Scratching up her hardwoods, or making a mess on her expensive rugs?" She scoffs a little, a perfect impression of her mother if the hazy memory he has of the day spent in their house is at all accurate. "I had a horse, but I don't think that counts."

"You had a horse?" he asks her, brows lifted. "Of your very own?"

Regina nods, and shakes her hair back a little, looking up at the clouds. "I rode competitively when I was younger. He wasn't housed where we lived; we didn't have stables. But he was mine. Rocinante."

"Quixote," Robin notes, recognizing the name, and Regina swivels her head in his direction, looking impressed and doubtful, and a bit judgmental.

"You read?" she taunts, like she'd doubted it before, and Robin drops his jaw indignantly.

"I do," he defends, although lately, no, he really doesn't. Unless you count the occasional magazine, or the morning paper that John still gets in print for some reason Robin cannot fathom.

"Cervantes?" she questions, her tongue forming the word with an accent that hints at a certain proficiency in Spanish. He thinks of her father, and his muttered  _coño!_  as he'd accidentally nearly toppled Robin's tools, and wonders if Regina grew up speaking it.

He bristles a little, much of it put-on, and admits, "Not for fun, no, but I did read it in school." Her brows lift and fall, her mouth curved in a satisfied smile as if she was right all along, and as usual Robin gets the impression that he's lost some sort of test with her. He finds himself compelled to defend, "I'm not as dumb as you think, you know."

"I never said you were dumb," she counters, not unkindly, a bit of her haughtiness gone.

But she's wrong on that, she must be. He's fairly certain she's thrown the word at him at least once in the weeks he's known her, and if she hasn't, she's definitely implied it. So he feels comfortable with the retort, "Actually, I'm fairly certain you have, more than once."

She grins at him, fierce and fiesty. "Well, you've done some pretty dumb things."

"Ah, there's the Regina I've come to know. The straight-talker, tact be damned."

He says it affectionately, because he finds that even her salty attitude is not enough to keep him from liking her. She keeps him on his toes, at least.

"I have tact," she argues. "When it's necessary. But I don't think coddling people - especially people you meet for the first time when they're stone drunk, uninvited, in your living room - is always beneficial."

"You appreciate honesty," he parrots back to her, her own words from earlier.

"I do."

He wonders what she'd think if she knew the truth. If he was honest. Would she race across the grass, grasp Henry and lead him home, call the police immediately and have him shut up in jail, sent home to England never to see Roland again unless Marian wishes it enough to pay a visit herself? Would she be able to see the honorable intentions in his dishonorable actions, and leave him be? Let him go on with his life?

He wonders how truly she'd appreciate his honesty then.

Silence hovers between them for a moment as he broods, and then she's the one caught looking when he finally glances her way again. He can't read her expression, though, aside from knowing that it's mild. Not unfriendly.

"You look better," she tells him kindly, and Robin frowns at that.

"I don't know what you mean."

"You look better than you did then. A bit less… stressed."

"I don't know if  _that's_  true," he tells her, "But I'm trying to get my life back together, and I think I might be succeeding. I'm not really sure. I've a job, but a good chunk of what I make is going to Marian now, to pay her back and help with Roland. I've not been drinking - at least, I've not been drunk. I've told myself it's better to be clear-headed, but I have to say the idea of getting absolutely blotto has occasionally been tempting."

"But you haven't."

"I haven't." Robin finds Roland again, giggling as he chases after the frisbee it seems they've recovered, Tuck racing ahead of him toward where Henry's thrown it long. "I want my son to be proud of me." His voice is quiet, private, perhaps more intimate than their not-quite-friendship requires when he admits, "I want to be a… good man."

There's silence there again, and he watches the boys and the dog, watches Tuck's ears as he bounds back toward Roland, nearly knocking into him, frisbee clutched in his teeth.

And then her voice, equally soft, "You are."

He turns to look at her, then, but she's looked away, is watching their sons, too, and he thinks for a second how wrong she is. If he was a good man, he wouldn't be anywhere near her.

But before he has a chance to say anything, his phone is buzzing in his pocket, and he's fishing it out, frowning at the caller ID. Marian. He'd lost track of time, hadn't realized how late it's getting, but she's still not supposed to be here for another hour.

He answers the call, lifts the phone to his ear.

"Hello?"

**.::.**

Is it eavesdropping if the person you're listening in on is sitting right next to you? Regina wonders as Robin tells his caller (Marian, she assumes, judging by the conversation) that they're at the park, and that no, his things are still at John's, she wasn't due there for a while yet.

Well, this won't go well, she thinks with a pang of sympathy. She tries to imagine what it would be like to have someone else in charge of when and how often she saw Henry and cannot imagine it. There are days where being a mother is stressful, days when she'd gladly take four hours at a spa over four hours with her son (and sometimes she makes good on that - calls Mary Margaret and pays her weekend rates so she can get a massage, and a facial, and a mani-pedi), but she cannot fathom a life where Henry was cut off from her. Where their time was limited by anything other than the demands of work and school. It would be torture.

She's never glad that Daniel is gone, never that, but she's grateful that she has no bitter co-parent to spar with. Nobody to speak to with the frustration Robin is barely masking as he asks, "Why does it have to be now? You said five-thirty," and then says, "Go run some errands, then," and "I can cook him dinner; I did last week," and, "Well, if you don't want him upset before bedtime then let him stay the bloody night, Marian, and I'll bring him back in the morning… I can bring him to church...  _Why?_ " His voice is practically a growl, low and full of seething resentment when he mutters, "Fine, I'll get him ready," and tosses the phone down to the blanket with a harsh exhale.

"Ridiculous," he mutters, and she looks back at him, then, as if she's been giving him his privacy by watching Henry's continued frisbee lessons with Roland and not absorbing every word.

"Everything okay?"

"No," he gripes bitterly. "I have to go get my son. His mother is here."

Without another word, he pushes himself to his feet and strides over to where the boys are playing. Regina watches as he scoops Roland up easily into his arms, watches as the toddler shakes his head vehemently a few moments later, and then he's grasping at Robin's shoulder, fisting into the material of his hoodie as Robin crouches down, beckoning both Henry and the dog back over.

Saying goodbyes, she thinks, but Roland is shaking his head again, his little face scrunching up miserably. He doesn't want to go. And of course he doesn't, he's three and he's having fun, and she imagines he loves his daddy as much as Daddy loves him, and doesn't want to be separated either. It takes a minute (Henry glances back at her, frowning), but eventually Roland reaches out and gives Tuck a pat, and Henry a wave, and then Robin is standing again and adjusting his hold, walking back in her direction.

Well, not really her direction. Toward the park entrance just a few yards away, and the woman now making her way toward them. That's when Roland really starts crying, loud enough that Regina can make out his wails of "No!" and "...with Daddy!" and Robin is bouncing him and then rocking, rubbing the boy's back and pressing his face into his son's cheek, turning away from Marian who crosses her arms and looks at the ground. The whole thing is miserable, awful, Roland's cries making Regina's chest ache and he's not even her child.

Robin is trying to talk to him now, brushing his hair back and cajoling, she can see him smile but even from here can tell it doesn't reach his eyes.

"Mom?"

Regina looks away, looks up to Henry who has just walked up to cast his shadow across her legs, Tuck trailing just a few steps behind until he catches the scents of chicken, and peanut butter, and cheese, and starts nosing at their picnic.

Regina frowns and gives him a little push, but he is undeterred.

"Yes, sweetheart?"

He doesn't answer, just looks in the direction she had, his face twisted up with sadness in a way she always hates to see. Roland is still wailing, is crying even louder now, harder, and she glances over to see him being handed off from Robin to Marian, his little body limp-noodling in protest, not making it easy for them.

Tuck manages to steal a piece of cheese, his eagerly smacking jaws drawing Regina's attention back, and she huffs and gives him another gentle shove, telling Henry, "It'll be fine. You used to scream when I dropped you at daycare; kids don't like to be separated from their parents, that's all." It's more complicated than that, but it's not Henry's problem, and she doesn't want him to feel like it ought to be weighing on his heart. "Why don't you get this little thief out of here?" she urges, and he looks back at her and nods.

But first, he says, "You should go talk to him. I think he's sad."

He walks away a few paces and then calls Tuck after him, and the dog must prefer frisbee to cheese, because he goes.

Regina looks back at Robin, the way he's standing there near the park entrance, alone now, Roland's cries muted by the closing of a car door. Robin has his hands on his hips, his shoulders rising and falling deeply. Sad doesn't begin to cover it, she thinks, and so she pushes to her feet and closes the distance between them.

"Worst sound in the world, isn't it?" she says softly. stepping up beside him. He hasn't moved a single step.

He looks at her, then, face tense and miserable, and nods. "I can't decide if I should be more angry at myself for fucking everything up, or her for being unwilling to try to mend it."

Both, she thinks, but then she tries to put herself in Marian's shoes, and… "Well, can you really blame her?"

He looks at her then, a glare, a scowl. "Thank you."

Regina shrugs a shoulder. "I'm not the one who broke the law."

"I don't need to be reminded, I'm well aware, thank you," he bites, and she wonders if it's unkind to poke at his sore spots when he's been so recently bruised. But as he so graciously pointed out, she's not one to be overly tactful. "And regardless of how much I might deserve some sort of punishment, Roland doesn't know that. He doesn't understand. All he knows is he doesn't get to see me, and it's hurting him. I can't stand the thought of him hurting like that. It's agony."

It would be, she thinks. Her son in a kind of pain she can't explain, and can't help. She has a sudden memory of Henry in summer preschool, of him coming home just before Father's Day wondering why all the other kids had daddies to make cards for and he didn't. What was he supposed to do? he'd wondered. They'd made a card for Daniel anyway, and taken the long drive up to Boston to lay it at his grave over the weekend. Regina's eyes smart just thinking of it, and she swallows hard, shakes off the memory. Focuses on Robin again, instead.

"He's three," she tells him gently. "He'll cry halfway home, fall asleep in the carseat, wake up for dinner and some Spongebob and forget all about it."

His scoff is a dry, humorless thing, and he shoves his hands in his pockets. "Is that supposed to make me feel better? Being so forgettable?"

Regina shakes her head, meets his gaze. "All I mean is that kids his age… they bounce back. And eventually you guys will settle into some kind of routine, and he'll get used to it. Just give it time. It won't always hurt him like it does now." He takes a deep breath in, and then out, and Regina's not sure what compels her, but she finds herself urging, "Come on, come sit. Henry's still playing with the dog."

He nods and turns on his heel, headed back toward her blanket, and in minutes they're just the way they were before. Side by side, legs crossed this time, his knee so close to hers that she imagines she can feel the warmth of him through two layers of denim (she can't, not really).

They sit in silence - her not sure what to say to him, and him brooding quietly, tugging up a few blades of wet, brown grass and ripping them into pieces.

Well, this is awkward.

It's Robin who breaks the silence, eventually. "I just don't see why she can't trust me with him."

Regina swivels her head, brows up and questioning. "Seriously? You're not sure why she doesn't trust you?"

She'd point out the thieving and the lying, but they pretty much go without saying at this point, don't they?

"With  _him_ ," he emphasizes, looking up at her with stormy blue eyes (he shouldn't be this attractive - what is it about broody, sullen men that she finds so attractive? she wonders). "She's made it quite clear why she doesn't trust  _me_." He looks away again, at Henry and Tuck, and sighs. "She says she doesn't recognize me. That it's like looking at a stranger. And I guess I can see that, for  _her_ , but not with Roland. She acts like I suddenly need to be doled out in small doses, like being around me is bad for him. And it's crap," he declares, his anger bubbling now, simmering under the surface and tensing his jaw, sending more dead grass to be mulched in his hands. "I'm a good dad, and I never did anything to hurt Roland. I would never do anything to hurt my son."

But that's not really true, is it? And he doesn't seem to mind her honest advice, so she decided to let him have it. As kindly as she can manage, but honestly.

"Sure you did. You split his family apart."

He glares at her. "Marian did that."

"Oh, please." Now it's Regina scoffing. "It's not like she just woke up one morning and decided to leave. You weren't exactly innocent, Robin."

"No, but I've always been there for Roland," he counters, and she supposes that's true. Assumes anyway, because she has no real way of knowing. He's still practically a stranger, after all. "I've not always been the best man, but I've never been a deadbeat, and I don't think what I did warrants what she's doing now."

"It seems like she disagrees."

"She's being irrational." He angrily wipes away the bits of grass he's been destroying, sends them off into the park lawn. "It's like she's made up this whole idea in her head of how things  _were_  just so she has another reason to be angry with me over how things  _are_. Another way to punish me for my crimes - and I accept what I did, but I didn't  _do_  this to  _Roland_. As easy as it would make things for her, I'm not a bad father."

"No, it doesn't seem you are," Regina concedes. "But we're not always rational when everything's falling apart around us. Sometimes we need to create stories to make ourselves feel better, to make it easier to do what we need to do. And maybe this is Marian's."

"And I'm just supposed to accept that? Pretend I was rotten all along?"

"Not at all," she tells him with a shake of her head. "You know your relationship with Roland and so does she. Fight for it." She leans in a little closer, her hand settling on top of his. Her fingers are icy, the back of his hand warm in comparison. "You don't have to let her lie to you, or herself, or Roland. But you do have to let her be angry. And unfortunately, that might mean having to let her dictate when you see your son." But she thinks of how frustrated she'd be in his situation, of how easily split parents can take advantage of the situation and turn against each other, and adds, "Within reason."

Robin scowls at that, but says nothing. Just shifts his hand until it's palm up, and lets his other rise to cover hers. He warms her fingers, presses them between his palms and rubs back and forth. It's a bit...forward, but, well, she was the one to reach out, wasn't she? When he drops her hand and reaches for the other to do the same, his thumb brushes over the emerald ring she still wears, the one Daniel had given her for her birthday all those years ago. She wonders how easy it would be for Robin to slip it off and pocket it - wonders next why she feels like he never would, even knowing what she knows.

"I hate her," Robin admits quietly, his gaze on their hands. "A month ago, I was in love with her. Or I thought I was. But now… I hate her. Days like this, I just… Even if I know she has every right to want her space, and every right to make her demands, when he cries like that, when he could just as easily stay with me for the whole bloody weekend and she's insistent she wants to take him home tonight… I hate her. And then I feel bad for hating her - and then pissed that I feel bad about hating the person who won't let me see my son."

One dark brow rises, her tone a bit on the sarcastic side when she drawls, "What a complicated little mess you have."

Robin drops her hands, muttering, "Thanks for the sympathy," and Regina actually feels a little bit… bad.

Still, she argues matter-of-factly, "I never promised you sympathy. And if anyone ever tried to keep me from Henry, 'hate' wouldn't even begin to describe what I felt, but…" Another shake of her head, and her hands are chilling again so she drops one back on top of his, tucks the other between her crossed calves. "You said it yourself. She has every right to want her space. You fucked up. And now you have to live with the consequences."

"I have been," he says plainly, much of his ire fading. Now, he just looks tired again. She'd been wrong about the stress. It's still there, wrinkling across his forehead, crinkling the corners of his eyes. "And I don't think everything should be all hugs and puppies between us after what's happened, but I wish we could keep Roland out of it as much as possible. He shouldn't be a chess piece; he shouldn't have to suffer." His hand shifts beneath hers, and he catches the very tip of her little finger, his middle finger curling around it. It's not really holding hands, but it's… more than just a touch, and his grip pulses against her when his anger percolates as he speaks. "I could be spending more time with him - I've days off, but she insists he go to daycare instead of spending them with me." He looks out across the park, and Regina follows, watches the little girl climbing the monkey bars, the brothers kicking up pebbles as they run from the climbing ropes to the slides. "First it was about his bloody routine, and now it's that she doesn't want to see me every day. Which is rich, considering she's gone out of her way to say that she's pretty sure we were already over anyway, we just hadn't admitted it." He turns his head, she catches it out of the corner of her eyes and turns back to meet him. "And if that's the truth, then why the hell is she so fucking angry that she's not willing to see me for even so much as a drop-off and pick-up?"

"Break-ups are never neat and tidy, Robin," she shrugs. "Even if you think it's going to be… it's not. And however much you might think you're okay with how things end… sometimes things… creep up on you."

"Speaking from experience, are we?" he guesses, his mouth pulling into a lopsided smirk, and Regina nods slowly, decides she knows all of his crap, it's her turn to divulge a bit. And maybe it'll help ease some of those worry lines from his face.

She looks down at their joined hands – and why are they holding hands? That's not… they aren't hand-holding friends. She disentangles, draws her hand back until her forearm rests on that knee so close to his, her fingertips barely brushing his hand now. Much better... Her attention shifts to a spot on his knee, and she begins to tell her sordid little tale.

"The last guy I dated, it wasn't really… love. We cared about each other, and the sex was great, but we fizzled out after a while. But we stayed together, for a long time. It was easier than breaking up, and it was nice to have someone to go out with, and go home with, and he was good with Henry. It was comfortable. But we'd lost that spark. And then he met someone at work. Someone with a bit more spark. And he left before he could cheat." It's a dull pain, the recollection of Graham and his new partner, of her relationship finally falling to shambles. Mostly healed, but still intensely personal. She straightens a little, looks up at Robin. "It was the right thing, and I knew that then. We'd long passed our expiration date, and ending things was best. Some days that was crystal clear, and I was alright, if a bit lonely," she admits, brow lifting. Her voice darkens, the picture of Emma Swan's long, blonde locks and Graham's contrite face swimming in her mind as she continues, "And others, I wanted to rip his still-beating heart from his chest and crush it."

Robin laughs at that, a short, sharp guffaw, then says, "Remind me never to cross you," and Regina grins. She gives him a look, a shrug of the shoulders and quirk of her brows that says something along the lines of  _Can you blame me?_

"My point is," she continues, her voice still light, "you were together for a long time. Even if she knows it's right, that doesn't mean it always feels that way. And she doesn't get a clean break like I did - you have a child together, she has to see you." Her fingertips slip along his hand again, not holding, not that, just a brush of skin on skin as she urges, "Don't give up on getting more time with him, but be patient with her. Earn it back; get your life together." She sits back a little as she finishes, "In the meantime, don't give her any reason to dig her heels in harder," and twists around to find her water bottle, unscrewing the cap one-handed as she turns back to face him.

He's watching her, a sort of smile on his face, and as she takes a drink, he says, "Aren't you a wise old owl."

Regina smiles, swallows, shrugs. "I'm a single mom."

As if that explains everything, but it must for him, because he nods and chuckles, looks her square in the eyes, and shifts their hands to give her fingers a squeeze. Then he says, "He's a lucky kid."

Regina feels a bubble of pride and something else that's warm, a little swelling of it in her chest.

She tells him, "Thank you," as she recaps her water.

As if summoned, Henry chooses that moment to come trotting over, Tuck clambering after him no doubt in search of the spit-slicked tennis ball clutched in his fingers. Maybe the frisbee tucked under his arm. Or maybe more cheese.

"Hey, Mom," he starts, his glance flicking to their hands as they separate. "I'm hungry."

"Well, then, I suppose we'd better get you home and start some dinner."

It's gotten late, they've spent the whole afternoon here in the park. All this fresh air will have Henry sacked out by nine, she wagers, and maybe then she'll actually make some headway on that book.

Henry's look goes hopeful, innocent, a cheesy smile and wide eyes as he asks, "Pizza?"

"You had pizza last week," she reminds, adding with a grimace, "I'll cook something while you wash all the slobber off your hands."

He drops the tennis ball unceremoniously (much to Tuck's delight), and wipes his hand on his jeans - as if that's helpful. And then he looks at Robin and asks, "Are you coming, too?"

Regina's stomach swoops with nerves - it's one thing to sit on a blanket and talk with the guy, it's another to invite him over for another, what? Hour at least? In her home? Again?

But Robin is bowing out, shaking his head and scrubbing his hands over his thighs, insisting, "I wouldn't want to intrude. And I've a small mountain of laundry to do tonight; I'm on my last clean shirt."

"We wouldn't want to keep you from that," Regina drawls, pushing to her feet and adding, "But I do appreciate a man who knows his way around a washing machine."

"Don't get too excited," Robin grins. "I once turned all my vests pink on accident."

"Of course you did," Regina mutters, shaking her head and pushing to her feet as Henry laughs. They make quick work of packing up the little that's left of their picnic (Regina pretends not to see the two pieces of cheese Henry sneaks to the dog while Robin helps her fold the blanket), and then Regina slings an arm around Henry's shoulders, shifting the nearly empty picnic bag she's making him carry home. Robin is hooking Tuck's leash, and then he straightens and gives her a nod.

"Thanks," he tells her, a simple word to cover an afternoon of therapy, but it's enough.

She nods back.

"Goodnight, Robin."

"Goodnight," he returns, looking to Henry and adding, "And thanks for running old Tuck around for a bit. My ball-throwing arm was starting to get a bit sore."

"Anytime!" Henry exclaims, beaming, offering a wave and a "Bye, Robin!" as Regina starts to stroll them toward the park entrance. When they've hit the street, he tells her, "Robin's pretty cool. I'm kinda glad he got drunk and puked at our house."

All Regina can do is laugh.


	9. Chapter 9

On Thursday, Regina leaves work early - a rare occurrence, but Henry has a speaking part in a class assembly this afternoon, and it's scheduled late enough in the day that she's able to leave halfway through the afternoon and make it there just in time. She'd gone in a little bit early, had worked through lunch, had expressed her gratitude to Leo for possibly the fourth time since he approved the early leave, and had been reassured by Sidney that everything would be fine without her for an afternoon. They have a presentation scheduled for Tuesday, but that still leaves tomorrow and Monday for prep, and so she relishes her early exit.

It's another warm day, another sunny afternoon, and after school she takes Henry out for ice cream to celebrate his perfect memorization of his part. Will it ruin his dinner? Yes, probably, but they can eat late, she supposes, and it's a special occasion. He creates a monstrosity, a scoop each of chocolate, and mint chip, and strawberry, with crushed toffee bars, and chocolate chips, and fudge sauce and whipped cream. God, she's a horrible mother for not curbing him, not making him scale it back, but there's nothing wrong with indulging every now and then and she refuses to be Cora, she refuses to police something as innocent as a rare ice cream date.

And just to prove her own point, she opts for ice cream for herself instead of her typical sorbet or froyo. Real ice cream, strawberry, sprinkled with slivered almonds and an indulgent drizzle of caramel. She orders two scoops, her growling stomach speaking for her, and figures she'll end up leaving a bit behind (she usually does). Instead she devours the whole thing, scrapes every last bit from the paper cup, and takes three bites from the minty portion of Henry's sundae when he finds himself defeated.

"You must've been really hungry," Henry tells her, impressed. And yes, she had been. It turns out a Lärabar does not a proper lunch make.

They're home by early evening, and Regina sends Henry off to get started on his homework and his reading, before changing out of her work clothes and curling herself in one of the arm chairs in their living room to do some reading of her own.

By 8:30, she's debating whether they need to have dinner at all (they do, Henry does, he should have something nutritious, but she's still stuffed).

At 8:32, her cell phone rings, and it's Sidney. She frowns, answers the call.

"Regina Mills," she greets out of habit.

"Regina, it's Sidney," he tells her, as unnecessary as her own declaration of her name. "Is there any chance you could come back into the office?"

She frowns, glancing at the clock. "Now?"

"Tuesday's meeting is being moved up to tomorrow - the client rep had to change his travel plans," he tells her, sounding as annoyed as she's suddenly feeling. So much for having Friday to plan. "Kathryn is already on her way back, but we could really use the whole team."

She sighs, and nods even though he can't see her, uncurling her knees with a grunt at their stiffness and muttering, "Yeah, alright. I'm on my way in. Do you need me to call Mal?"

"No, I'll, uh… I'll do it," he tells her, and Regina finds herself smirking at the obvious reluctance in his voice. She can't imagine Mal being particularly docile about having her evening swallowed up by emergency work.

"See you soon," she tells him before ending the call.

She dials Mary Margaret's number as she heads back to her bedroom in search of something more appropriate for the public than the leggings she'd thrown on thinking she might spend some time on the treadmill after reading.

The conversation is not a fruitful one.

Mary Margaret, it turns out, has plans. Well, dinner. Well, dinner and a movie maybe. Well, maybe she could reschedule, but she was already on her way out the door, it will take her almost an hour to get to Regina's from where she is now. Is that okay?

And no, not really, it's a damn annoyance is what it is, so she tells her to hold tight, that she'll try to find someone to at the very least cover a little bit of the early evening, and get back to her.

Once she's back in slacks and a sweater, she pokes her head into Henry's room (he gives her a guilty face when she catches him playing video games instead of reading, but he's had plenty of time to finish by now, and she trusts him, tells him so) and lets him know what's going on.

"Can I go to John's?" he asks hopefully, surprise surprise, and Regina would tell him no immediately, but, well, Granny Lucas is out of town this week and there aren't many other neighbors that Regina knows well enough to trust with Henry.

So instead she tells him, "We'll see," and heads for the John and Robin's. It's just an hour, maybe the guys won't mind...

Just her luck, it seems they have company. Aside from the car double-parked out front and half-blocking traffic, there's the sound of a television playing loudly, several shadows moving across the blinds as she climbs the step.

This isn't promising.

But still, she knocks, and a moment later Robin opens the door, the unmistakable, pungent smell of marijuana immediately wafting from behind him.

Regina's eyes roll so hard it almost hurts, and she shakes her head, and mutters, "Nevermind," mentally berating herself for ever thinking this was a good idea in the first place. They're not babysitters, they're men. Single, irresponsible men. And so what if one of them has a child and the other a dog, they're imbeciles, both of them. (At least, they are tonight when she's in a bind and they're of no help to her.)

"Wait - Regina!"

He reaches out, grasps her arm just long enough for her to still and turn, leveling him with an impatient look. He glances back behind him, and she can hear laughter, male voices, and then he's pulling the door nearly shut, stepping half onto the porch to do so, and asking, "What did you need?"

"Nothing," she tells him emphatically. "Not if you're high."

"I'm not," he insists, holding up his hands, palms out, claiming innocence. It would be more effective if he wasn't so… fragrant. "They're smoking, I'm not. If you need something…"

She narrows her eyes skeptically, pointing out, "You smell like a Nirvana concert."

"Well, that'll tend to happen when you're sitting in a room with a bunch of blokes smoking pot, but I assure you, I'm not high. I'm trying to be better for myself - for my son."

"By sitting around with a bunch of guys smoking weed," she accuses doubtfully.

"Well, what am I expected to do, sit up in my room and read my Bible while my mates are here getting caned?"

Regina's only response is a pointed lift of her brows and a tight crossing of her arms. Why is she even still standing here? It had seemed an easy solution five minutes ago - having Henry stay with John and Robin, at least until Mary Margaret could make it over to watch him - but she'd forgotten how entirely juvenile they were. Had forgotten that they were two bachelors, one of whom had, in recent weeks, gotten so drunk he didn't know the difference between his place and hers. So much for turning over a new leaf, she thinks.

He sighs, rakes a hand through his hair, looks frustrated with her.

"What did you need?" he asks again, and this time she lets out a heavy breath and finally answers him.

"I need to go into work for a little while, and the sitter can't make it to my place for an hour. I was going to ask if you guys could watch Henry until she gets here, but–"

"I can do that," he tells her easily, and Regina doesn't even fight the scoff. "I'm not high," he insists again, and then, "Regina, _look at me_. Do I look high?"

She frowns, looks him up and down. Studies his face.

He's bright-eyed, doesn't appear dulled in the least. And he's certainly not succumbed to the fit of snickering she can hear from inside.

He turns his head at the outburst of laughter, peeking inside, and then barks, "Oi! For Christ's sake, Will, quit blowing smoke at that poor dog."

Regina feels a lance of annoyance and sympathy race through her, mutters, "You have got to be kidding me." She raises her hands, surrender, defeat. "I don't know what I was thinking coming here. I'll just call my coworkers and tell them I won't be in until–" She glances at her watch, scowls, "10:00."

At this rate, she'll be there all night.

"Nonsense," Robin insists. "You'll be there all night at that rate. I can watch Henry - all evening if you need, it's no problem – at your place. He won't set foot in here, I swear it."

"Would you pass a drug test right now?" she questions. Robin inhales, his mouth pinching together, then exhales hard. Regina presses: "There is no way you don't at least have a contact high." Hell, even from the door she's starting to feel a little dizzy.

"You know what, Regina?" he gripes, "I probably wouldn't. You're right – I've been around it all night, but I've all my faculties. I'm not high. I can certainly take care of a ten-year-old for a few hours if you need help. And I owe you that, at least, after what I did."

"That was weeks ago." She straightens her shoulders, stands a little taller. "And I'd say the security system covered our debt."

"Alright, then do me a favor and give me a reason not to be here right now."

"That would be doing you a favor?" she questions. "I thought you were spending time with your 'mates.'"

"I am," he says, "But Marian texted twenty minutes ago and said she was considering letting me have Roland for the day tomorrow instead of sending him to daycare - since it's a Friday and all, and I'm supposed to have him overnight again anyway. I probably shouldn't be having a third beer and breathing in smoke for the rest of the night."

Regina arches one brow slowly. "You're going to want to Febreze the place."

"I can handle it."

Regina sighs, relents, because he does seem sincere and mostly sober. And because it really would be easier than making Mary Margaret drive halfway across town.

"At least change your clothes," she mutters. "And bring Tuck. The poor thing doesn't need to be subjected to-" she waves a vague hand toward the door behind him, "all of that."

Robin nods, tells her, "I'll be there in five minutes."

Regina leaves without another word, not entirely sure that she isn't making a terrible mistake.

**.::.**

It doesn't take Robin long to change - he strips out of his shirt and jeans, changes into clean ones and freshens his deodorant, spritzing himself with cologne and then spraying it directly into his palm and running his hand through his hair in an attempt to mask the smokey smell inevitably clinging to it.

He feels a bit like a teenage boy on a first date, overly perfumed, but it's better than having Henry wonder what that funny smell is. Bad enough that there's really not much he can do about the dog.

He leaves quickly, and tells the men that he'll be next door if he's needed, leading Tuck out on his leash and hoping his foray through the common area hasn't undone much of his attempts at freshening up.

He doesn't bring a coat, and regrets it for a moment as the night air makes him shiver. But then he's ringing her bell, and Henry is letting him in, all smiles, and the chill gets shut out as the door swings closed behind him.

Henry bends down to pet the dog as Regina approaches from the kitchen, already in her coat and tapping out a text message on her phone.

"Thank you for this," she mutters almost absently, but then she glances up and offers him a smile, and he thinks she might genuinely mean it.

"Anytime," he dismisses, coiling Tuck's now-freed leash around his hand and turning to drop it on the little table near the door just as Henry announces that Tuck smells funny. Robin and Regina lock gazes, hers stern and displeased, Robin's a bit guilty. Her brows lift expectantly, it's on him to explain, and he fumbles a bit, managing, "Yeah, he uh… he got into a bit of a run-in with a skunk at the park and we've had a hard time getting the smell out."

Henry pulls away from the dog, grimacing his disgust. "Ew."

"Yes," Regina confirms, biting down a smirk now. "Ew. So he is under no circumstances to be let up on the furniture, do you understand, young man?"

Henry nods, and so does Robin, and then Regina is rattling off instructions: "My cell number is on the fridge, and so is my office number and address, and the pediatrician's number, and if God forbid any sort of emergency happens-"

"Regina," he interrupts with a smirk. "I know how to take care of a child - I do have one of my own, if you'll recall."

She gives him a look, one that he's guessing translates roughly to 'one you're barely allowed to see,' and then she softens, and sighs, and nods.

"Bedtime is nine-thirty on school nights, so please have him there no later than ten, and he hasn't had dinner yet. There's food in the cupboards, but if you'd rather order in, there's forty dollars in a drawer in the kitchen - Henry knows which one." She switches her attention to her son and tells him, "Be good, finish all your homework, do not stay up too late, and _do not let that dog on my furniture._ If you do, Grandma will sense it from across town and call asking to come over for dinner tomorrow night."

Henry grins and snickers and nods, says, "I got it, Mom. Go to work. Robin and I will hold down the fort."

She mutters something that sounds an awful lot like _That's what I'm afraid of_ , and then she leans in and presses a kiss to Henry's forehead, gives Robin a wave and disappears toward the back door.

As soon as the door shuts behind her, Henry turns to Robin with a grin and asks, "Pizza?"

**.::.**

Regina has never been great at group work.

She'd been raised to overachieve, raised to strive for perfection, so group projects always seemed like her doing all the work and everyone else taking all the credit. It's different at the Blanchard Group, but only marginally so. Nobody on this team is lazy – far from it – but group work still comes with its downsides, namely, an absolutely shitty group dynamic.

Why Leo felt the need to put Mal and Kathryn on any sort of team together, Regina simply cannot fathom, because their not-so-friendly rivalry leads to snippy backbiting on the best of days – and an unexpected Thursday evening at the office is definitely not the best of days.

Half an hour in, and Regina already has a headache.

Kathryn is in knots again, some sort of argument with David that has her chewing her thumbnail and distracted from the task at hand. And Regina understands Mal's ire, she really does – because she wants to get out of here as much as the next guy, wants as close as she can manage to a full night's sleep while still having a stellar presentation to deliver to the client in the morning, and having to repeat everything twice isn't going to help that any.

So when Sidney goes to meet the Chinese food delivery guy in the lobby, and Mal mutters, "I'm going out to the balcony for a smoke," and takes her leave as well, Regina turns to her friend with a no-nonsense expression.

"Either get it all out in the five minutes we have alone here, or find a way to put it out of your head until tomorrow," she tells Kathryn without preamble. "We need your head in the game here, Kathryn. If you're going to slow everything down, you might as well leave."

The blonde blinks, a little surprised by the sudden turn of the conversation, and then she nods, says, "Right. I'm sorry. I'm just… I don't think he's happy, Regina, and I can't figure out if it's me, or us, or him-"

"Can you solve it right now?"

"Right this minute now?"

"Yes, right this minute. Right now. In this room."

"No," Kathryn admits, running her pen through her fingers, and looking lost, discouraged. It's enough for Regina to soften just a little. "No, I can't solve it right now, this minute, in this room."

Regina covers Kathryn's hand with her own, gives it a little squeeze. "Then put it out of your mind. Let the work be a distraction, give it your total focus. David will still be there when you get home. But if Mal has to repeat something one more time, _you_ might not be."

Kathryn scoffs at that, shakes her head with a dark little laugh. "She's such a bitch," she mutters. "I don't know how you two manage to get along."

"I'm a bitch, too," Regina reminds her. "And I'm not sure 'get along' is the term I'd use."

"She doesn't sharpen her claws every time you walk into the room," Kathryn points out, and Regina shrugs, says something about years of working together and Kathryn needing to thicken her skin.

"She doesn't have time for personal issues; she's here to make money," Regina reminds, lowering her voice as she spots Mal making her way back toward the conference room, Sidney not far behind and laden with take-out bags. "But she respects your work, if not your… everything else. Be sharp. Do your job. Don't try to be her friend."

"Not a problem," Kathryn mutters as their companions join them again, Mallory sliding back into her seat, Sidney beginning to unpack their dinner, popping open containers to reveal their contents.

"I have… sesame shrimp," he declares, sliding it over to Kathryn, "Ma po tofu," which goes to Mal, "And steamed chicken and broccoli, garlic sauce on the side, with brown rice instead of white."

He hands Regina her dinner with a smile before unearthing his own, and then there are chopsticks being passed around, napkins finding their way into eager hands, paper and plastic crinkling as Sidney balls up the delivery bag and tosses it toward the empty end of the table.

Despite her earlier indulgence, Regina is suddenly starving, suddenly famished, and for a few minutes all interpersonal conflict is forgotten as the four of them tuck into their dinners.

When conversation starts again, it's Kathryn, and it's all business.

**.::.**

Robin and Henry order that pizza (because who is he to deny a boy pizza, and it's easier than cooking something up anyway), half pepperoni, half cheese, and a bottle of Coke to go with it because Regina doesn't keep such things in the house. When it arrives, they eat in the kitchen like responsible people, a far cry from Robin's habit of eating on John's couch in front of the TV, and when Tuck begs and whines at their feet, Robin allows him only a few pieces of pepperoni instead of the usual torn-off chunks he'd throw at him.

"Pizza gives him gas," he tells Henry. "We let him have any more and he'll stink up the joint all night. Don't think your mum would appreciate that."

"Definitely not," Henry agrees, and they spend their mealtime chatting about this and that. Henry's a bright kid, smart and curious, and Robin has enjoyed what little bits of time they've spent together. Tonight is no different, and he finds he doesn't so much mind giving up his night with the boys in exchange for a few hours with a fourth-grader.

That is, until the conversation makes its way around to the first time they met. The night Robin broke in. How funny Henry thinks it is that it happened, and now Robin's here taking care of him.

"It seems your mum is the forgiving sort," Robin tells him with a smirk, and Henry nods, tells him, _Sometimes._

"So do you get drunk like that a lot?" Henry asks, and Robin nearly chokes on his bite of pizza, coughing lightly and swallowing hard. Apparently bluntness runs in the Mills family.

When he recovers, he mutters, "You're certainly your mother's child, aren't you?"

Henry simply shrugs, takes another bite of his pizza, and waits expectantly for an answer. Robin has little choice but to give him one, he supposes.

"No," he says, "I don't. I'd just had a particularly bad day."

Henry looks at him, serious and attempting to be wise. "Drinking isn't the answer, you know."

Robin chuckles. "I think I learned that lesson quite well."

"Shouldn't you know that already?" the boys asks, before pointing out the obvious: "You're a grown-up."

"Yes. I should," Robin agrees, because drinking the better part of a bottle of whiskey is unwise at any age, but certainly something one should outgrow by the cusp of thirty. "I'm afraid I'm not very good at being a grown-up lately."

"Is that why Roland's mom is mad at you?" Henry asks, and Robin wonders just what exactly Regina has told the boy when he's not around. He frowns, looks at Henry, and the boy adds, "I saw you guys at the park. You were mad when you came to get Roland, and when you were talking to my mom afterward. You didn't want him to go."

"No, I didn't," he says quietly, eyeing the pizza box now and wondering if he should have yet another piece, or if they should save some for Regina. But then, maybe they're eating at work?

"So she's mad at you," Henry deduces. "That's why you live with John."

"It is." And because he is the adult and ought to be controlling the narrative here, Robin continues, takes the conversation by the horns: "I did something that was very hurtful to her, and she doesn't seem to be able to forgive me. So now I live with John, and we're raising Roland apart."

Henry frowns at that, asking, "Do you want to get her back?"

It's getting easier and easier for Robin to admit, "No. I think our time was just about up anyway. But it's still hard – especially when kids are involved. Parents always want our children to see the best in us. It's not easy when things go wrong, or when we're angry or feel weak, or sad, or scared."

The boy's head bobs slowly, agreeing more than absorbing. He knows this already, it seems. "Mom gets upset sometimes. Sad and stuff. And she always tries to act like she's not. like everything's okay. She smiles a lot, and runs a lot, and stuff like that. But she's not all that good at hiding it."

"She wants to be strong for you," Robin reasons, certain he's right even if he doesn't know Regina all _that_ well. "I imagine it's difficult, having to be both mum and dad. A lot of pressure to be everything you need all by herself."

"She's good at it, though," Henry says with a proud smile that Robin can't help but return.

"That she is."

Tuck chooses that moment to attempt to jump up onto the living room sofa, apparently having given up on getting more scraps from the table, and it has Robin scrambling into the living room to chase him down from the cushions.

The conversation shifts then, particularly after Robin catches sight of the clock and grimaces. It's well after nine already, the boy's due in bed soon. He sends him upstairs to change his clothes and brush his teeth, asks if he's finished everything he needs to for the morning, or if he needs help (hopes he won't need help). Henry tells him Regina usually checks over his homework, that he'll bring it down. Lovely, that.

While he waits, he pokes around the living room, straightening this and that, eventually ending up at the piano. There are books on it now, he notices. New ones. Spines that haven't creased yet, and pages that still want to close on their own. One of the books is clearly geared a bit more toward kids, filled with songs from animated movies, and it's that one that Robin is thumbing through when Henry comes back down the stairs, dressed for bed and with papers in hand.

He pauses, tilts his head and asks Robin, "Do you play piano, too? You were sitting there with my mom that one time."

"I do not," Robin tells him. "At least, not terribly well." He holds up the book, and asks, "Are you learning?"

Henry's face falls a little, and he shakes his head. "No… I think Mom wants me to, but…" He trails off then, the papers in his hand shuffling a little bit as he adjusts his hold on them.

"But?" Robin coaxes, setting the book back on the piano and giving Henry his full attention.

"I don't really like the piano," he admits. "It seems kinda… boring? And Grandma always says stuff about it when she's here, and makes Mom feel bad. She makes her feel bad about a lot of things, and… I don't know if Mom really likes the piano or if she just feels like she has to because Grandma always talks about how much they paid for her lessons, and how good she used to be, and how she's wasting all of that and letting the piano gather dust."

Robin's not quite sure how to respond to that. There's a part of him that aches over it, for her sake, and a part of him that mutters smugly he's glad he ripped off that old bat, it seems she deserved it. But he's not glad of it, not really, not after everything, and as he looks at Henry, he tries to think of the right thing to say. He wonders if Regina knows where the boy's reluctance actually comes from.

He settles on, "She likes it. She might not have always, but she likes it. I imagine she wouldn't have bought these new books if she didn't think she'd play."

"She's been playing _a lot_ ," Henry admits, and for some reason it sends a little thrill through Robin. "She comes down after I go to bed a lot of the time, and I can hear it."

"She's quite good," Robin says, remembering the way Regina's fingers had moved over the keys.

"Yeah. But it seems like a lot of work."

"Most things worth doing are," Robin tells Henry with a shrug, adding, "It took years for me to get good at the guitar. Lots of practice, and lots of hard work. Sore fingers, and the like."

"You play guitar?" Henry asks, perking up noticeably. Robin tells him that he does, and Henry declares, "That's way better than the piano."

Robin chuckles, and nods, jokes with him, "Gets you a lot more attention from the ladies," and earns himself a grimace.

"Maybe not, then."

Another laugh, and Robin says, "It's great fun to learn. I could sit you down right now and teach you what you'd need to know to play a song. Perhaps not very well, but you could play it."

"Could you?" Henry asks, eyes going wide, and, well, Robin hadn't meant that he literally could right this very second, it had been more of a figurative "right now," but… He looks at the clock again. It's nearing ten.

"Y'know…" Henry starts, clearly noticing Robin's gaze. "My mom won't know if I stay up a little bit past my bedtime. And I won't be that tired tomorrow - I stay up reading sometimes after bedtime, and I'm just fine at school."

Robin knows bargaining when he hears it, and he has to give the kid some credit for effort. And he's right, Regina's not likely to know, unless she comes home early and catches them still up, but somehow he doubts he'll see her before midnight. Maybe he could spare a little bit of time? Henry doesn't seem the least bit tired anyway, and it's been a long time since he's had a chance to show someone how to play.

Of course, he'd need a guitar, and at present, he doesn't own one.

That's a bit of a deal-breaker.

Then again… "Alright," he gives in. "Half an hour, and then to bed with you - I think one of my mates has his guitar with him, I just need to pop back over and borrow it. Leave your papers on the table and I'll give them a look afterward."

"Yes!" Henry exclaims, victorious, bounding off toward the kitchen with his schoolwork while Robin heads for the door and prays Regina hasn't miraculously finished work already.

**.::.**

She hasn't. Not even close.

She's sitting in the same chair at the same conference table, nursing a more mature version of the same headache as they throw idea after idea onto a whiteboard and hope one of them will turn out to be a brilliant breakthrough that allows them to finally head home.

Time ticks by, it's late, later, almost eleven now, and she's still here, graciously taking the extra coffee Sidney returns with when he makes a pit stop to the kitchen on his way back from a bathroom break. Black, and strong, with a splash of half and half. Something to jolt her rapidly tiring brain back to attention.

"Hey Romeo," Mal drawls, letting her chair swing back and forth slightly, her feet propped on the one next to it, spike heels off now, leaving her stocking-clad toes free to stretch. "If you could 'just happen' to pour a _third_ cup of coffee the next time you go to the kitchen, that'd be nice. Regina's not the only one who's tired here. I left what could have been a very mediocre date leading to very great sex for this."

"Seriously," Kathryn mutters quietly, a show of actual solidarity between the two of them, and now Regina _knows_ it's getting late and they're all getting tired, because who would have expected that?

"I only have two hands," Sidney points out, setting his own coffee on the table and stepping back up to the whiteboard. "But there's more in the pot if you'd like it."

Mallory rolls her eyes, and huffs, drawing her feet back and down to the floor again as she sits up and looks to Kathryn. "You want one, Goldilocks? As long as I'm going."

Did she fall asleep at the table? Regina wonders. Is she dreaming?

Kathryn looks as startled as Regina feels, but she recovers quickly, and says, "Yes, please. With soy milk."

Mal's "Ugh" in response is disgusted enough that Regina is sure she's awake after all. That's more like it. "I don't know how you drink that crap. It tastes like dish soap," she grumbles, standing and not bothering to replace her shoes as she saunters out of the conference room.

"Wow," Kathryn says, lifting her brows. "For a whole five seconds there, she managed to be a decent human being."

"Shall we continue without her?" Sidney suggests, and Regina takes another deep swallow of her coffee.

It's going to be a long night.

**.::.**

Henry, it turns out, is a a quick study at the guitar. Robin wasn't absolutely positive how much he could teach the boy in half an hour, but he'd managed to give him a rudimentary understanding of how everything worked, and teach him how to play an E chord and an A. Enough to sketch out a bit of the Beatles' "Love Me Do."

Henry's hands weren't quite strong enough to avoid muted strings, and his sense of rhythm wasn't awful but wasn't perfect either. Still, he'd picked up the basic ideas quickly, and he'd had so much fun that their thirty minutes had bled quickly into forty. The boy's fingertips had been dented from the effort of pushing down on the strings of Will's guitar by the time Robin had insisted he see himself to bed, and he'd hoped and prayed that the excitement practically coming off Henry in waves wouldn't keep him from falling asleep quickly. Robin was already feeling guilty about the blatant violation of bedtime he'd allowed.

And then the house had been quiet.

Very quiet.

Just Robin and the dog, and the latter had fallen asleep on the living room rug a few minutes ago. So now just Robin and a guitar itching to be played - something he hasn't had much chance or opportunity to do in quite some time.

He picks up the guitar, removes the capo and lets his fingers pick and strum. His own calluses aren't what they used to be, not after months without playing (a realization that causes a sharp pang in his gut), but the muscle memory is still strong. He plays his way through one familiar song, and then another, humming softly to melodies of his own creation. Songs he used to play when making music was his job instead of pouring drinks or hooking up overpriced electronics for people who made more in a week than he did all month.

The realization has him feeling bitter and parched, dried up, despondent. A feeling that gets no better as it occurs to him that the song he's singing under his breath is one he'd written for Marian years ago. Back when he'd thought his life might turn out quite a bit more charmed than it has. He lets his fingers fall across the strings, one last heavy strum, then he sets the guitar aside, texts Will to come grab it so he doesn't have to leave the house again while Henry's supposed to be asleep.

But when it's gone, he's left once again without distractions. A quiet house with a snoozing dog and slumbering child, just past midnight and still not a word from Regina.

He doesn't mind staying late, even if it means he'll be a bit knackered for Roland in the morning. He's survived worse than a tired day of parenting. But he's loathe to just sit around and do nothing, so he heads to the kitchen, cleans up the remnants of their dinner, tossing their pizza box and clearing the dishes, leaving the place as spotless as he can so Regina doesn't come back to a messy home after a long day.

He thinks to check on Henry's homework, but it's maths and he finds he hasn't a bloody clue how they're teaching it these days, and it's not really his place anyway, is it? So he leaves it for Regina, sets it out neatly on the kitchen table where she can't miss it in the morning.

And when he's nothing left to do, he wanders back into the living room, picking up the book she'd left sitting on the side table there and starting at the beginning, set to find out just what secret lives the bees were living.

**.::.**

It's nearing three AM when Regina finally trudges through the door, and the only reason she's home at all is because Henry needs to be at school in the morning. The others are still at the office, still finishing up, will take time to run home and change and shower perhaps, but not much more than that. But Regina is a mother, and so Regina needs to make breakfast, and check homework, and chauffeur her son to the private school that doesn't bus him.

So she's home, walks into her house and moves on instinct to the security system, but it's off. Robin and Henry never alarmed it, she realizes with a roll of her eyes, but then who would break in when the lights are still on? When someone is clearly home and awake?

And then Tuck trots in from the living room, and she remembers that they have a guard dog of sorts tonight, too, so why bother?

"Hi, buddy," she murmurs softly to him, crouching down and giving him a little scratch before wrinkling her nose and declaring, "You still stink."

Tuck wags his tail, noses against her arm affectionately, and it's not until then that Regina realizes she hasn't heard so much as a peep out of Robin. The living room lights are on, but the rest of the house is dark, and she stands, frowning and stepping into the other room.

There she finds Robin on the sofa, sound asleep, one of her books resting on his shoulder as if it had fallen there from lax fingers. She has a moment of memory, of him sprawled in that very spot, reeking of booze and snoring loudly enough to wake the dead (or at least her ten-year-old) while she readied herself to bean him with a baseball bat if necessary.

And now he's babysitting for her (and not snoring, she notices). Oh, what a difference a month makes.

Or maybe she's just gone crazy.

But the house isn't in disarray, and while it's not ideal for a sitter to fall asleep on the job, she can't really blame him considering the late hour. There's a half-drunk cup of soda on the coffee table - dutifully placed on a coaster, and she picks it up gingerly, quietly, keeping her steps light as she carries it through to the kitchen and turns on the light there.

There are worksheets on the coffee table - Henry's homework, she realizes, done and waiting for her. And his reading chart with the date checked off and initialed RL. One less thing she has to take care of in the morning, she thinks as she dumps what's left of Robin's Coke and moves to put the cup in the dishwasher. When she finds it empty, she blinks, stares. It had been half-full when she left, had still needed to be run. Did he do the dishes?

Yes, she realizes, opening the cupboards and finding her favorite mug put away on the wrong shelf, the glassware not exactly arranged the way she likes. He'd run the machine, and unloaded, and the kitchen looks as though it hasn't been touched all night, every surface free of crumbs, the sink empty of dishes. Well. Not so crazy after all, it seems. The man knows how to keep house.

Who'd have imagined?

Or maybe he's just sucking up.

God, she's tired.

No, she's exhausted, her eyes like sandpaper and her limbs like lead (but also oddly like barely attached balloons), unused to all-nighters. A glance at the clock on the stove has her doing mental math (not an easy feat at this late hour). She can catch maybe three hours of rest if she falls asleep immediately, but there's no guarantee of that, even as tired as she is. And Regina knows enough about sleep cycles to know that if she isn't going to be able to manage that full three hours, she's better off just taking a nap. An hour, tops. Just enough to recharge her batteries to the point where she can make it through the day.

So she leaves Robin on the couch, undisturbed (throws a blanket over him, and eases that book away from his body, telling herself it's the mom in her that has her doing it, not any sort of concern for the way his arms are crossed tightly over his chest, his side wedged tightly into the back of the sofa for warmth), and trudges up the stairs, does the bare minimum to get ready for bed (a makeup remover cloth from her travel bag to strip away her stale makeup and cleanse her skin, and a swish of mouthwash instead of brushing her teeth - she'll be up again to brush them in an hour anyway), then changes into an oversized, threadbare t-shirt that had once smelled of Daniel and now smells of Downy and perfume, and collapses onto the bed, her alarm set for 4:30 precisely.

She falls asleep in minutes.


	10. Chapter 10

It's the noise that wakes him. Rhythmic. Steady. Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk, over and over, unending, a sort of swishing beneath it.

He's disoriented at first, clearly not in his own bed, the dark of pre-dawn not much help as he sits, and blinks and squints. His eyes adjust, the thin light of streetlamps filtering through curtains eventually giving things a bit of form and shadow.

Regina's, he remembers. He's at Regina's.

And that sound is coming from the back room - her study, if one can call it that (there's a desk, sure, and one wall lined with bookshelves, but he'd spent the early part of the night before on its sofa, learning the ins and outs of Mario Kart while they waited for pizza to arrive and he couldn't help but notice the copious amount of DVDs and Blu-rays crammed on the TV console). Curious, Robin rises (nearly trips over the dog in the process), and plods clumsily back toward the hallway, toward the light spilling out from the room where Regina is clearly awake (still awake? awake again?) despite the early hour.

He stops in the doorway.

There's a treadmill tucked into one corner of the room, facing the wall, and that's where he finds her, in a sports bra and leggings that cover hip to mid-calf but leave nothing to the imagination. Her short locks are bound up into a stubby ponytail, little wisps of it fallen loose, her skin sheened with a layer of sweat as her trainer-clad feet hit the belt over and over and over. Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk.

Robin's mouth goes dry.

He shouldn't be looking, feels a bit like he's spying, but her back is well-toned, and her arse is… well, fairly incredible, to be honest, and hugged snugly in dark charcoal grey. He swallows, blinks, looks away.

"You know, it's a wonder you managed to sneak in here unnoticed the first time, drunk as you were," she pants, and Robin startles slightly, caught, even if she's not yet turned to look at him. "You walk like a damn elephant."

"I do not," he counters, frowning, because he's been quite light-footed in the past, when he was younger and a bit more mischievous. "Leastways not when I'm fully awake."

She grunts, her only response, still staring at the wall in front of her.

But she doesn't tell him to go, so he ventures in closer, approaches along the side of her, leans against the desk and tells her, "You're a bit mad, you know that?"

Regina looks at him, lifts a brow (face truly bare this time, not a drop of makeup to be found - he can see the difference now between "no makeup" and what she'd worn that day in the park - and exertion has her flushed, faint dark circles under her eyes from exhaustion).

"You got in late - must have, because I remember seeing one-thirty before I nodded off," he explains. "And yet here it is-" he glances at the clock on the DVR, "five-oh-eight and you're running on the treadmill?"

"Wakes me up," she tells him breathlessly. "I didn't have time for proper sleep, just a nap, and if I sit around, or read or…" She shakes her head, sucks in a particularly deep breath. "It's too quiet, I'll fall asleep. And I don't want to wake Henry, so… running it is."

He'll give her that, he supposes, conceding with a conciliatory frown as he crosses his arms over his chest.

She's wearing very little.

He's known that since he walked in, of course, but there's a bit of a lull here, and suddenly he's very aware of it. Very aware of her dewy shoulders, of her slick collar, her bare belly, her breasts confined beneath black and purple. She's wearing very little, and was likely not expecting company, not expecting to be ogled in her own home in the wee hours of the morning, so he makes a point to look elsewhere. To look anywhere but her.

He studies the DVDs across the room, squints to make out titles. The entire series of  _Mad Men_  in a block, and  _True Blood_  nearby, all of the  _Harry Potter_ s on a shelf more convenient to the height of a child and he thinks he recognizes quite a few of the Marvel titles filed together just between...

Regina is a bit of magnet, though, and he finds himself drawn to her, her pumping arms and working legs, her toned belly.

Shit.

He's looking again.

He pulls his gaze away, back across the room ( _O Brother, Where Art Thou?_ , he thinks, and  _Moulin Rouge_?), and hears her scoff slightly next to him.

When he hazards a glance back, she's smirking.

"Robin," she huffs with a roll of those dark eyes, "You're not exactly subtle. And I'm half-naked and sweaty. I think I'd be more offended if you  _didn't_  check me out."

Robin offers up a guilty grimace of a smile and lifts a hand to the back of his neck to scratch. "Sorry."

She shakes her head, punches a button on the machine a few times and her steps slow to a brisk walk.

"Don't be. It's fine. For whatever reason, your roving eye isn't particularly offensive."

"I'm going to take that as a compliment," he tells her, and since she doesn't seem to mind, he takes a moment to glance at all those enticing parts. The line of her belly, the soft dip of her navel, the sweat that beads down her breastbone and disappears into her cleavage.

She licks her lips and it draws his eye, gives him a suckerpunch of want, of desire to kiss, to touch.

Fuck.

He shouldn't be looking at her, shouldn't be thinking of her. He knows better, knows this can never be.

"Meant it as one," she says, still breathing heavily, her voice a little rough, a little husky with exertion. It makes the mind wander places it shouldn't, makes him wonder what else would make her sound that way, and he's almost glad when she blinks hard a few times, sucks in another deep breath and admits, "God, I'm tired." Perhaps that means she'll stop, and he'll get a break from bare skin and that roughed-up voice.

She punches the speed down again, easing her gait to a slow walk, her hands finding purchase on her hips for a moment before she asks, "You want coffee?" and then, "I could make breakfast."

As tempting as that offer is (he remembers her coffee, has been meaning to ask her what it was so he can buy some for his place), he probably shouldn't linger with her here. And he doesn't want to put her out - he hadn't meant to stay the night in the first place.

"I should probably get home," Robin tells her with a shake of his head. "I've got to shower and dress and walk the dog before I head over to Marian's."

And, if he's honest with himself, probably rub one out in the shower to the thought of her sweat and her voice and her… everything.

Fuck.

He's very, very attracted to Regina Mills.

"Oh, come on," she dismisses casually. "It's five AM. You have time for coffee and eggs. Besides, if you leave, I have to keep running."

He laughs a little at that, shaking his head. She really does look beat, and he imagines she's not kidding - that if he leaves her here alone in the quiet of her home, she will push herself to stay awake. And she's right, he has time enough for a bit of breakfast.

"Well, we can't have that, I suppose," he acquiesces, and she blows out a breath, punching that same button until the treadmill stops and leaves her gripping the handles. Her arms tremble just slightly; she's spent.

"Great." She clears her throat and straightens a little, then says, "Coffee and filters are in the cupboard above the pot. Use five scoops. I'm going to go de-sweat."

"Oh, so I'm making the coffee?" he chuckles, as she steps off the treadmill.

It's a nod from her, and a "yep," and then she's walking out of the room ahead of him, flipping on the hall light this time as she goes.

Robin follows, taking one last moment to appreciate the rear view before he heads for the kitchen.

 

**.::.**

 

Regina makes quick work of her shower, washing away sweat and exhaustion, lathering her hair, soaping her body, conditioning and rinsing and running a razor over the bare minimum of necessary areas. When she emerges, she spends a moment just standing on the bath mat, a thick, soft towel wrapped snugly around her, her head feeling like it's stuffed with cotton as she tries to decide just how much getting ready she wants to do this early. She doesn't want to show up to work wrinkled, or risk getting a stain on anything from runny egg yolks or sloshed coffee, but she's not really comfortable sitting around the kitchen with Robin in just a robe. Her usual get-dressed-last routine isn't really helping her out this morning.

She opts for another pair of leggings instead, and a camisole, tugging her robe on over that and feeling considerably less exposed than she would if she were just in her underthings. Leaving her hair to its own devices isn't an option this morning - she needs to look put together and if there's one thing (a million things) she'd had drilled in for her entire young life it's that her unruly waves are not what one would call polished and professional. She has to see to it before it dries on its own, but it's still early. Henry has a while longer to sleep, and she suspects he was up past his bedtime last night, so she's loathe to rob him of a single minute. Instead of drying her hair in the bathroom upstairs, she brings the hair dryer down to the powder room, puts a floor between the noise and her sleeping son.

The downstairs already smells like coffee, warm and enticing and wonderful, and by the time her hair is done, it smells like something else, too - bacon. It seems Robin has helped himself to the fridge - and sure enough, when she pads her way into the kitchen, she finds him at the stove, Tuck sitting dutifully next to his feet, tail wagging vigorously as he hopes for a bit of fallen breakfast.

Or for it to be handed right to him, she thinks with an eye roll as Robin grabs a strip of turkey bacon off the plate he's set next to the stove and dangles it down for Tuck to gobble up.

"Does he have the munchies?" Regina asks, crossing her arms and lifting her brows.

Both man and dog look toward her with surprised, guilty eyes, and then Robin grins and shrugs. "Seems so."

Regina guffaws softly and crosses the rest of the distance between them, opens one of the cupboards and reaches into it for a thick, heavy mug.

"You didn't have to cook," she tells him, and Robin shrugs again, tells her he doesn't mind. He had nothing else to do.

"And I'd hate for you to think I can't cook a proper meal," he adds with another smile (he's awfully perky for a man who was woken at five o'clock in the morning, she thinks).

She pours her coffee, ducks into the fridge for a dollop of half-and-half, then breathes in the scent of it before taking a slow sip. Hot, strong, dark. Perfection. For a moment, she lets her eyes close, sipping again and enjoying, but her eyelids begin to feel heavy, leaden, and she forces them open, blinks rapidly, and murmurs, "And a decent pot of coffee. Who knew?"

"Well, you did give me fairly specific instructions," he points out, and true, she had.

There are eggs sitting on the countertop, four of them, and he reaches for one now, cracks it into the pan he's just cleared of bacon. Regina grimaces. She's all for the economy of pan usage, all for fewer dishes, but frying the eggs in bacon drippings just seems... greasy. It was turkey bacon, she reminds herself. It's lean, not a puddle of slippery, salty fat. It won't be horrible.

And he's cooking for her, unasked. So she keeps her mouth shut this once, and simply sips her coffee again as he cracks another egg into the pan.

Toast pops up to her left with a joyful release of springs, and Regina jumps slightly at the noise, unaware as she was that there'd been anything in the toaster to begin with. He's just thought of everything, hasn't he?

Everything except...

She moves to the fridge, pulling out a carton of strawberries and bringing them to the sink for a rinse. She'll slice up a few for Henry to have on his cereal, she thinks - or should they make enough eggs for him, too? No, that's silly, they'll be cold by the time he wakes up. But maybe she'll scramble a few while he's getting dressed and – what did Robin just say?

"Hmm?" she asks, settling the carton down on the countertop where it leaves a little, wet puddle and reaching for a knife and the small cutting board.

"How do you like your eggs? Runny? Hard?"

"Oh," she says, and then, "Somewhere in the middle, I guess."

He nods, then yawns (and then so does Tuck, and then Regina, a domino effect of sleepiness washing through the kitchen), and Regina begins slicing the tops off her strawberries, then cutting them into quarters, filling a tupperware that she grabs from the cabinet below her.

A moment later there's a soft, annoyed curse and she glances over to find that Robin has broken the yolk on one of the eggs. He does the same thing with the second batch, and she smirks, bites her tongue against the urge to point out that maybe he can't make a proper breakfast after all.

When he plates the second intact egg with the first two, then slides the broken one from the first batch onto his own plate, she's glad she didn't criticize. Chivalry comes in many forms.

"Is this dark enough?" he asks, reaching for the toast and setting it on her plate. It's a perfect golden brown, and she nods, watches him toss another two pieces of bread into the toaster and crank the heat up to eight out of ten. Well, alright then. Someone likes his toast black.

"Do you have jam, or...?"

Regina lifts a brow. "You already helped yourself to the fridge once," she points out, and Robin gives her a look.

"You said you wanted eggs," he reminds, and she supposes she had, or at least she'd implied it, so she takes pity on him and tugs the door open (she's closer than he is anyway), spinning the jars lined up in the shelf of the door so she can read the flavors - strawberry, and concord grape, and apple butter, and mixed berry...

He asks for the apple butter, and she grabs the jar, sets it on the countertop, and tells him none for her. She'll take hers dry.

"Dry toast?" he asks her, forehead wrinkling in confused amusement.

Regina points at her plate and says, "The yolks are plenty, and I have coffee."

"Very well, then." He lifts her plate and holds out it to her. "Your breakfast, milady."

She mutters a thank you, then takes the plate from him and adds a generous helping of strawberries and a single piece of bacon before bringing it to the table. The eggs are fine, not as greasy as she'd feared, and the yolks are soft enough that she can dab them up with her toast. Robin waits for his own toast while she eats in silence, Tuck sitting next to  _her_  now, his tongue lolling out as he watches her take bite after bite.

She stares him down, fights the urge to smile at his dopey dog face, then tells him, "Not a chance, buddy."

Robin chuckles from his place near the counter, but says nothing.

By the time he makes it to the table with his own breakfast, hers is half gone and she's pulled Henry's homework toward her, is scowling over the pages. The work is good, fine, a mistake or two but nothing that will hurt his grades terribly, and it looks like he understands the lesson, for the most part, so she's alright with him turning it in as-is.

God, it's too early for math.

She blinks hard, reaches for her coffee again and sets the schoolwork aside as Robin bites into his charred toast with a noisy crunch. She takes a few swigs from her mug, then reaches for her own toast, using it to wipe up what's left of a yolky puddle on her plate before taking a bite.

"How was work?"

Regina glances up, chews, wonders if he'd intentionally chosen the moment her mouth was full to ask her a question. She swallows as quickly as she can manage and tells him, "Fine. Exhausting. We got a lot done, but the people on this project with me can be... tiring, at times."

"Oh?" he asks, with genuine interest, tearing off a hunk of bacon and popping it into his mouth.

"The team is me, my best work friend – who is having marital problems and a hard time keeping them to herself – the impatient hardass of a woman who can hardly stand said friend even when she's not oversharing about her personal life, and the guy who's had a crush on me pretty much since he started working there several years ago. So it was… interesting."

Robin tries his best to stifle a laugh and fails, his eyes dancing with amusement, crinkling at the corners as he grins at her. "Sounds like quite a night."

"Yeah," she nods. "We do good work, but sometimes it felt like  _I_  was the one babysitting. How was Henry? Did he give you any trouble?"

"None at all," Robin tells her. "He's a great kid. The time flew by."

She pauses, last bite of egg balanced on her fork and asks, "Is that your way of admitting he wasn't in bed by ten?"

Sure enough, Robin gives her a guilty look and admits, "It might have been nearer to ten-thirty. We lost track of time."

"Mmhmm," she mutters skeptically. "I'll let that go, since you ran the dishwasher - which you didn't need to do, by the way, but thank you. I appreciate it."

She takes that last bite of egg, finally, as Robin shrugs and says, "You run to stay awake. It seems I clean house."

He's nearly done with his eggs, too, she notices, despite her considerable head start. Graham had been the same way - always done with his plate while she still had a quarter of hers left. Daniel, too. A guy thing, she thinks. Soon it'll be Henry who beats her to the end of every meal, but she's not ready to think about that yet, so she tries to steer her brain back toward the conversation at hand.

"I should rob you of sleep more often and point you toward the bathrooms," she teases, smirking and spearing up a bit of strawberry onto the end of her fork.

Robin's chuckle is warm and… nice. Masculine. He's very… he has a nice face. A nice jaw. Nice shoulders, and good teeth.

Why is she noticing his teeth?

Regina blinks, shakes her head to clear the meandering thoughts of how attractive her neighbor is.

She needs more sleep.

She won't be getting any, though. Not until tonight, anyway.

"What time do you get Roland?"

It's something to talk about, something other than those dimples that go on for days.

Robin sighs (tiredness, she thinks, not anything more sinister or disappointed) and shifts in his chair, answering, "I told Marian I'd try to be there by eight, so she has plenty of time to leave for work. I should probably head home before too long, make sure the men didn't trash the house entirely last night, and spray the whole place with air freshener."

"Don't let me keep y-" Her words are interrupted by a massive yawn, one that sneaks up on her and stretches her jaw wide, has her pressing a first over her mouth to stifle it.

When it ends, Robin is staring at her. Smiling. Regina feels her cheeks flush and curses herself silently.

"Put your head down for a few minutes; I'll wake you," he offers, and Regina just laughs softly, disbelieving. What does he think she's about to do? Curl up against the edge of the table? (It's a testament to her exhaustion that for a moment even that sounds good.) But then he's insisting, "I mean it. Lie down on the couch - I can speak from experience, it's quite comfy."

"And what'll you do while I sleep?"

"Clean up breakfast," he answers earnestly. "Prove my housekeeping skills to you once again."

His words have her smirking a little, and her heavy eyelids have her agreeing reluctantly. "No more than twenty minutes," she warns him, setting down her fork and pushing her plate half an inch away, taking one last swallow of her coffee.

"Scout's honor," he swears, and she knows that's not right.

"Oh, you were a Boy Scout, were you?" she taunts doubtfully, smiling as she stands.

"No, but the sentiment holds," he assures, standing with her, his plate empty now, and reaching out for a moment to cup her elbow with his fingers. "Now go lie down, or you'll fall asleep at your desk."

She's not sure entirely why she's giving him so much trust, but Regina does as he says, curling up on the sofa that now smells vaguely of pot and cologne (what a  _wonderful_  combination) and letting her eyes drop shut.

**.::.**

Twenty minutes come and go quickly, Robin filling the time by cleaning up their breakfast as promised, quietly rinsing dishes and stowing them in the washer, then taking Tuck out to do his business, standing in the chilly dim of early morning and bouncing on the balls of his feet as his arms pucker into gooseflesh.

It's not until after the dog makes a decent pile in the middle of the bloody sidewalk that Robin realizes he has nothing to clean it up with, and he grimaces, glances up and down the empty block, and tells Tuck, "We'll pretend we were never here, alright?"

The dog looks at his mess and then at Robin, head tilting, ears shifting, and then he lets himself be led back inside and curls up on the living room rug again. Robin washes up, glances at the time, cuts up another handful of the strawberries Regina had abandoned on the countertop, enough to fill the container she'd been working on, popping a few in his mouth as he does.

And then time's up, and he's tasked with waking her, padding softly into the living room and peering down at where she lies on the sofa, her back pressed against the cushions, fingers of one hand curled around the edge of the throw pillow beneath her head. She still looks tired, he thinks. Shadows under her eyes, her skin a bit pale in the rapidly increasing light, a few locks of hair strewn across her forehead where they don't belong. Her robe has come unbelted, one side pooling on the cushions and revealing a glimpse of dark cotton trimmed with lace. He can see the steady rise and fall of her breath beneath the camisole. He doesn't want to startle her, wants her to wake peacefully if he can manage it, so he starts by saying her name softly.

"Regina."

Nothing.

A little louder now, " _Regina_."

Still nothing.

Robin reaches down and grasps her arm gently, giving her a rub from elbow to shoulder and back. She takes a deep breath in at that, then exhales heavily, but not a peep more and not so much as a flutter of her lashes. Another rub, and the same.

She is out. Her body probably crying for sleep, he imagines, considering her claim that she'd only gone down for a kip before running herself into a good sweat. He has half a mind to let her sleep a while longer, to rouse Henry himself and see that the boy gets some breakfast and brushes his teeth and whatnot before waking her, but that's not really his choice to make, he supposes, and truth be told, he has no idea how long her morning routine might take her. He's loathe to be on the receiving end of Regina Mills' temper when she's been deprived of proper rest. And he'd promised to wake her, and so wake her he shall. He just hopes she doesn't protest his methods…

Still trying to coax her into the land of the living gently, he sits in the space between her belly and her bent knees, then lifts his fingers to push the hair back from her face. It's soft against his fingers, silky and smooth, and he can't resist the temptation to let his fingers run through to the ends even after he's tucked the locks safely behind her ear. She sighs, her lips twitching, but she doesn't wake.

He says her name again, his fingers reaching for her face, but as her lips part, he hesitates, wonders if he should be touching her at all. If she'd be alright with that. But then she seems to settle, her breath evening out, and they can't have that. He lets his hand move forward after all, running the backs of his fingers from apple to jaw, a soft caress as he says her name again. This time, she squirms at least, her shoulders shifting, brow furrowing. Her head turns to the side slightly, turns into his touch, but her eyes stay firmly closed.

He combs his fingers through her hair again, pressing a little more firmly as he urges, "Come on, love, time to wake up now."

A soft moan, another squirming sigh, and then her chin turns toward his wrist, her cheek sliding right into his palm, her mouth drawing into a pout that is downright adorable. She's been many things in the time he's known her, but never quite this… cute. She reminds him a bit of Roland, of the way he rubs his eyes and pouts in the mornings. Robin cannot help but grin, coasting his thumb along her cheekbone and coaxing again, "Almost there… Now let's try to open our eyes, hmm?"

She huffs out a tiny breath and her lashes finally crack open, blinking blearily as he draws his hand away from her face. It takes her a moment to focus, but when she does her eyes go wide and she pushes herself up suddenly, her robe slipping off one shoulder, a hand propping her against the cushions while the other rakes through her hair as she rasps, "Sorry."

He thinks he catches a hint of pink in her cheeks as she clears her throat and shifts to sit fully, hands weaving at her nape for a second before dropping down to her lap.

"I apologize if I was a bit forward," he tells her, his hands safely on his knees, fingers curled against the itch to touch her hair again. "I just didn't want to startle you awake."

She nods then, murmurs that it's fine, and thank you, and, "What time is it?"

"About half six." She's blinking and blinking, stifling a yawn. God, she's lovely. Shit. He needs to leave. "If it won't have you running again, I'm going to head home."

She nods, tells him, "Go. I need to finish getting ready, and get Henry up. I'll be fine."

But when he moves to leave, to rise, her hand shoots over and grabs his. "Thank you," she says as he looks back at her, her gaze sleepy but sincere. "For last night, and this morning."

"It was nothing," he assures, giving her fingers a squeeze before their hands slide apart and he stands so she can do the same.

Within minutes, he has Tuck clipped into his leash again, and is darting a guilty glance at the pile of shit on the sidewalk he really ought to clean up before he leaves for Marian's.

Despite his best efforts, Regina lingers in his thoughts as he readies himself for the day.

 

**.::.**

 

Henry does not rise easily, and Regina finds her goodwill from the morning fading fast.  _Ten-thirty, my ass,_  she thinks as she spies her son staring dazedly into his cereal while she packs his lunch and her own.

"Five minutes, Henry," she warns with a glance at the clock. "Pick up the pace."

He sighs and spoons up more Cheerios and strawberry, chewing, chewing, but he's only made it through about half his bowl, so she grabs a few granola bars from the pantry, tucking them into his lunchbox just in case he needs a snack mid-day. Then it's into the bag, along with his homework, the reading checklist due today, a permission slip he had just remembered he needed signed this morning, a check wrapped up inside.

She drops a kiss to the top of his head before making her way upstairs and shrugging out of her robe, peeling off leggings and camisole and shimmying into a garnet-colored dress and heels. She throws on a few accessories, then stops by the bathroom to check her lipstick and notices that Henry's toothbrush is bone dry.

Perfect.

An annoyed huff and she heads for the stairs again, trotting down this time and tossing her lipstick into her purse by the door, then calling back, "Henry Daniel, you have approximately forty-five seconds to brush your teeth and put your shoes on."

She hears the scrape of his chair as she heads down the hallway, but he's gone by the time she gets into the kitchen, rounding her through the living room if the footfalls up the stairs are any indication. She takes his bowl and cup from the table and dumps what's left down the disposal before tucking the dishes into the washer and filling her travel mug with the last of the coffee from this morning. By the time she's screwing the top on, he's back, shoes laced, jacket on, shouldering his backpack and grabbing a water bottle from the fridge, still looking surly and bad-tempered.

She waits until they've been in the car for ten minutes without so much as a peep before asking, "So. How late did you guys stay up last night?"

"Not that late," he shrugs, staring out the window.

"Really."

"Uh huh. Nine-thirty."

That little liar...

"Try again," she tells him, her tone letting him know she's not buying it.

"Ten?"

"Really?" she asks, her annoyance ticking up with every little fib. Henry doesn't tend to lie to her, and truth be told, he's not great at it, so she wonders whom he's trying to protect here, himself or Robin. The idea that he would lie for the man grates on her.

"Did you already ask Robin this?" Henry asks, and she can hear the scowl in his voice. Ah, he's caught on.

"I did," she confirms. "And now I'm asking you."

"What did he say?"

"Not relevant."

Henry sighs, and sulks lower in his seat, then admits, "10:45, but I couldn't sleep. I wasn't tired."

She's almost surprised that their timelines match up so closely, considering how overtired Henry is this morning, but she supposes if he stayed up after, if he saw eleven, or even eleven-thirty, that'd do it.

"You couldn't sleep at quarter to eleven?" she questions. "You're usually out by ten. What had you so riled up?"

His response surprises her, has her brows lifting slightly: "He was showing me how to play guitar."

"Oh, was he?"

"Mmhmm. And I think I was pretty good, too!"

Regina glances over at Henry and finds him pleased with himself and smiling, really genuinely smiling, for the first time all morning. Well, look at that. She smiles back and tells him, "That doesn't surprise me. You're good at most things you put your mind to."

He starts telling her about the song Robin had taught him, and about the different parts of the guitar, and how he meant to cut his fingernails this morning because the strings kept not sounding quite right. (Regina bites her tongue, thinking of the million times she has told Henry to please clip his nails and been met with an eye roll and a sigh. Who knew half an hour with a guitar was the solution.)

And then they're at school, and he's leaving her with a smile and a wave as she heads back into what she hopes will not be terrible traffic on the way to work.

Halfway there, she pulls into a left turn lane, flicks her blinker on and then props her temple against her fist, elbow to the bottom of the window while she waits for the light to change. Her eyelids start to droop and she's forced to sit up straight again, fiddling with her sound system until Amy Winehouse is blasting loud enough to hopefully keep her awake.

The light changes, and she shifts her foot from brake to gas, saying a silent prayer that she makes it through this day without falling asleep on her feet.

 

**.::.**

 

He knocks.

Despite the keys clenched in his fingers, Robin knocks on the door to her apartment. And it really is Marian's now - she's covered the walls in a fresh coat of rust-colored paint, has returned the framed art print he'd reminded her was his in a recent fit of petty temper, has removed every photo of him excepting the one of him and Roland at the beach last summer that's still stuck on the fridge with a Mickey Mouse magnet.

Aside from that one photograph, it's as though Robin never lived here, and as he waits for her to answer the door, as he waits to be granted entry to the home where he first sung his child to sleep, he feels the ache of that change in his throat. He doesn't want her back, not that, not anymore. But coming here, especially coming here with envelope in hand as he does now, makes him feel a swirling mix of grey emotions. Anger and resentment running under loss and regret, and a sort of detached acceptance that this is life now.

Weekends with his boy, and sometimes even calling it that is generous. Sometimes it's only hours. Not today, though, he reminds himself, as he hears Marian's voice growing closer beyond the door, as he hears her flipping the lock. Today, it's two full days, two overnights. Today, he swallows down his ill will, and decides to be grateful.

She's already dressed for work when the door swings open, and the smile she gives him is perhaps a bit less tight than usual.

"Thanks for getting here on time," she tells him, nodding him toward the kitchen, and calling out to Roland, "Guess who's here, baby?"

At Roland's curiously excited, "Who, mama?" Robin reaches for Marian's arm, tilts his head questioningly when she turns to face him.

"He thinks he's not seeing you until tomorrow," she murmurs, and for a moment there's mischief in her eyes. For a moment, they share a secret, as parents. A happy surprise for their boy.

Robin hangs back, lingering just out of view as Marian walks fully into the kitchen and then follows, spying his boy in his booster seat at the table, a plate of apple slices and squares of peanut butter-slathered toast in front of him. Roland's eyes go wide, a surprised grin blooming on his crumby face, and when he shouts "Daddy!" Robin grins right back, all stormy emotions from moments before gone.

"It's me!" Robin confirms, closing the distance between them and reaching down to hoist the boy up into his arms for a good squeeze.

"You're here today?" Roland asks, and Robin nods, brushing his beard against Roland's cheek as he does and earning a ticklish giggle.

"I am here today, and then you're going to come back to Uncle John's with me and have a sleepover tonight  _and_  tomorrow night."

"I am?!" Roland nearly screeches, wiggling his excitement, and God, Robin has missed this child.

"You are," Marian confirms, approaching with a smile and a playful tap to Roland's nose. She has her purse now, has her keys dangling from her thumb. "Daddy's going to take you over to John's before I get back from work, so I'm going to say goodbye now, okay? Sweet dreams and good sleep, and Mommy will miss you so, so much."

Robin fights the urge to scoff, to mutter she doesn't know the half of missing her child.

But he stays silent, lets her lean in and press a kiss to Roland's cheek ("Miss you too, Mama," their boy says) and ruffle a hand through his curls. "He could use a haircut, if you have the time," she tells Robin, trailing her fingers through dark locks again and frowning.

Roland shakes his head and scowls, whines a protest.

Unfortunately for his son, Robin understands the request for what it is - something she'd like him to take responsibility for. So he heaves a sympathetic sigh to Roland and says, "I'm afraid so, m'boy. I could use a trim, too - perhaps we'll go get our haircuts together tomorrow, hmm?"

Roland brightens at that - at going with his dad, at doing it together, his frown gliding up into a smile as he nods. Robin nods back, resolutely, says "That settles it, then," and shifts the envelope now wrinkled in his clenched fingers to his freer hand and holds it out to Marian. "For you," he tells her, and she lifts the flap, thumbs through the bills tucked inside - the money he's agreed to give her on a regular basis.

"I thought you were going to transfer it," she says, and Robin feels his teeth clench. Can he do nothing right?

But she looks curious, not angry, so he pushes down his own frustration and says instead, "This was faster. If you'd rather, I can take it–"

"No, this is fine. Thank you," she interrupts with a little smile and a shake of her head. Then she's leaning in and giving Roland another kiss, telling him to be good for his daddy, telling Robin their son's things are packed and by the door, and finally leaving.

Robin adjusts Roland on his hip and looks down at him. "Roland, my boy."

His son smiles up at him. "Yeah?"

"What shall we do with ourselves today?"

They end up on the couch, with the rest of Roland's breakfast (Robin feels less inclined to enforce such rules as eating at the table now he's only with his boy on the weekends) and  _How to Train Your Dragon_. Roland gets peanut butter on one of the cushions, and crumbs on the front of Robin's shirt, but as the two of them doze off there on the sofa, Robin stretched along the length of it and Roland sprawled atop him, the mess hardly seems important.

 

**.::.**

 

Regina sleeps late on Saturday, had slept away half of Friday evening, too.

After her late night and early morning, plus a full day of work, Friday night had pretty much been a wash.

The day had gone well, their big meeting going off without a hitch and hopefully without telegraphing the absolute exhaustion and snippy short tempers of everyone who had spent the last night working.

There had been coffee. So much coffee. Buckets of coffee. Enough that by the time Regina had picked Henry up from school, she'd been jittery and vaguely nauseous. And glad – so very glad – that it was the weekend, and she didn't have to be up tomorrow, or worry about checking homework, or anything like that.

They'd had grilled cheese and soup for dinner, something fast and simple, and yet Regina had still managed to burn her thumb when she took her attention off the hot pan for just a moment, her hand slipping as she turned to talk to Henry. It was nothing, just a little strip of red soreness, but it had taken her over the edge from tired to cranky, and she'd had half a mind to skip dinner entirely lest she run the risk of snapping at Henry.

But she'd managed, she'd made it through dinner, had had Henry help her clear the dishes, and then she'd told him to under no circumstances leave the house, to wake her if he needed her, and to not stay up past his bedtime again.

And then she'd slept.

From the middle of the evening until almost ten in the morning, she'd slept, waking disoriented and cotton-mouthed but finally rested.

The house is quiet now, almost too quiet, but Henry's door is open, and the alarm hasn't gone off, so she figures he's up and about somewhere. Probably downstairs watching TV, or playing his way through  _Epic Mickey_. With no reason to worry, she takes a shower, and takes her time with it. Lets the hot water clear away the last of the sleep from her brain, and uses the body scrub that makes her skin smooth and silky.

By the time she descends the stairs, she's wondering if she should be thinking more along the lines of early lunch than mid-morning brunch (maybe they'll go out somewhere, make a little date of it) – and then she stops her train of thought entirely, pausing on a step halfway between upper floor and lower. Blinking at the sight she sees from her perch.

Henry.

Sitting at the piano bench.

Flipping through one of the piano books she'd bought the other day - no, not flipping - poring over, with a determined frown. Studying.

Is it possible she's still dreaming?

"Good morning, sweetheart," she greets, and he shuts the book and looks up at her, tells her  _Hi, Mom_  as she finishes those last few steps and makes her way toward him. She nods toward the book as she walks, asking him, "Which one is that?"

Henry tips up the front cover. The  _Once_  songbook. "It has the guitar stuff in it, too," he tells her, flipping it open and pointing at the chords above the piano line. "See?"

Ah.

The guitar.

She should've known.

Regina paints on a smile and settles next to him, asking, "Show me?", and together they look through one of the songs, pointing out the different chords and when they change. He asks her to play the piano line, and she does, picking her way through "Falling Slowly" and watching him give an extra nod at each change in the guitar part. Well. It seems they've found his instrument.

So when he asks, "Do you think I could go over to Robin's today? Maybe he could show me how to play it," she's loathe to disappoint him.

Still, "Robin has Roland this weekend, and I think we should let them be. They don't get much time together. But maybe sometime next week, okay?"

It's a compromise Henry seems willing to make, especially when she dangles the prospect of going out for brunch in front of him. But he asks her again that evening, and once more on Sunday, and Regina decides something needs to be done about it.

 

**.::.**

 

The last person Robin expects to see at The Rabbit Hole is Regina Mills, but she shows up around 7:00 on Monday, still clad for the workday in a dress (something beigey from what he can see beneath the hem of her coat) and pumps, and asks if she can talk to him for a minute. Just a minute, she promises, she doesn't want to take him away from his work.

So he doesn't bother with taking an actual break, just walks to the end of the bar and beckons her to follow. She hands him a small envelope, his name written on it in neat cursive.

"Thank you for the other night," she tells him sincerely, and he slips open the flap of the envelope to discover a Thank You card with a few bills tucked inside. "I really appreciate you taking the time to watch Henry, especially on such short notice. And he had a great time with you."

"It was no trouble," he insists, pulling the card from the envelope but tucking the money inside again and holding it back out to her. "Honestly. And it was a favor; I don't need payment."

"Don't be ridiculous. You did the time, you get the cash."

"I did it as a favor for a neighbor."

"Robin." She gives him a look. "Keep the money. Lord knows you need it right now."

Robin clenches his jaw. He's not really any business turning down whatever spare cash comes his way these days, but he'll be damned if he wants handouts on account of her feeling bad for him. He has a bit more pride than that - is starting to, anyway. He tells her so, frowning and then, "I don't want your pity payment, Regina. It's fine."

Her eyes go steely at that, her mouth pinching.

"You babysat my ten-year-old," she bites. "Overnight. That's a service that I pay for. You're not getting any more or any less than his usual sitter does. It's not pity, it's payment, and it's payment that you earned." She crosses her arms over her chest, leaves the envelope there on the bar between them, neither willing to pick it up just yet, it seems. "And for the record, I do not pity you, Robin. You made your choices." She softens a little then - not fully, she doesn't go entirely kind, just a bit less full of ire. Then seemingly out of nowhere she says, "You taught Henry to play guitar."

"Just a few chords," Robin admits with a roll of his shoulder. "He's a bright kid. A quick study."

She nods, and for a moment, those crossed arms look more like hugging herself than defiance. "He was really excited. Actually picked up those piano books I bought him - the ones with piano  _and_  guitar, anyway. He's never been that excited about music before…" She looks askance and shakes her head slightly, and he wonders if perhaps he shouldn't have brought the guitar over. If maybe he's hurt her unintentionally by facilitating Henry's interest in something other than the piano she's tried to urge him toward. And then she takes a breath and meets his gaze again, saying, "He wants to learn, and I thought maybe you could teach him. If you're interested." Her expression shifts toward annoyance again as she adds, "And if you don't think my paying you to do so would be pity."

This is why she came, he thinks. She could have easily dropped the card off at home and not gone out of her way. She came here to offer him a job - and a job playing music, at that. Something he has sorely missed, something that just the suggestion of makes something inside him feel just a little bit looser, a little less bogged down. So Robin sucks up his pride, and nods, tells her, "Yeah, of course." He hopes she won't find it terribly rude when he follows up with, "Did you have a rate in mind?"

Regina lifts her shoulders, lets them fall. "The music shop by my work charges thirty for a half-hour, but thirty minutes doesn't seem like much time. So… how's fifty an hour, once a week?"

Robin's brows lift. That's decent pay, considering he's little to no teaching experience, and she could probably find someone willing to charge a bit less. But he's not about to haggle her down if she's willing to pay him good money, so he nods, tells her, "Sure, that's brilliant. I'm here Monday through Wednesday evening, it'll have to be later in the week, or on the weekends - but Marian seems to be more willing now to give me Roland. I wouldn't want to give that up for a teaching gig."

"No, of course not," Regina dismisses, as if the very thought is ridiculous, and then, "Thursdays? Say… seven o'clock?"

"Works for me."

She smiles then, and it's warm and pleased. It looks nice on her. "Great," she says, pressing her palms to the bar and taking a breath before continuing, "He'll need a guitar, and, frankly, if an instrument doesn't have keys I'm pretty much useless, so if you wouldn't mind I thought maybe week one could be a shopping trip? You could help us pick something out..."

"Yeah, of course," he agrees, and that's perfect because, "I actually need to pick one up, too. I hocked mine a few months back." He'll have to scrape some money together for it, perhaps give Marian a little less from this week's pay. He'll buy something cheap, he thinks. Just something he can play. Nothing fancy. Something to get him by until he's back in the black and can afford something a bit better.

They arrange to meet at the music store near her work on Thursday at seven sharp, and she takes his mobile number, puts it into her phone, says she'll call him if plans change.

Then she leaves him there at the bar, heads back home to her son, and it's not until after she's gone that he realizes that envelope of cash is still sitting on the bar, his now whether he wanted to accept it or not.


	11. Chapter 11

_I'm going to be a little late. Meet at my office instead?_

The text comes in at ten to six on Thursday night, and Robin taps a quick reply -  _Sure - address? -_ then changes into something a little more appropriate for waltzing into a corporate office than jeans with a ketchup stain on the knee (he'd been eating a hot dog in the living room). Clean jeans, and a button-down top, a spritz of cologne just to be on the safe side. Nothing too fancy, but at least none of it is splotched with remnants of dinner.

The address for The Blanchard Group is waiting in his texts when he finishes, so he shrugs on his coat and heads out.

Her office is in a tall building downtown, the concierge directing him to a bay of elevators that take him up to the eighth floor. The elevator opens to reveal a pair of glass doors, the company name frosted onto them, a young, pretty blonde standing and gathering her things at a reception desk just beyond.

He lets himself in and smiles at her, watching her straighten a little and smile sweetly back at him.

"We're closed for the day," she tells him with a hint of reluctance. "But how can I help you?"

"I'm here for Regina Mills," he tells her, and she brightens considerably.

"Oh!" She shoulders her purse and adjusts her jacket. "You must be Robin."

"I am," he nods pleasantly, and she introduces herself as Ashley, says she'll show him back to Regina's office before she heads out. He follows dutifully into an open plan office with a cluster of cubicles in the middle, their dull grey walls peppered with calendars and notes and personal mementos. Actual offices line the outside of the room, most with glass walls and glass doors, the usual clutter of workplace productivity behind. Paper-strewn desks, and executive chairs, dull potted plants or colorful paintings on the white-painted walls. It's all very... corporate.

Regina's office is halfway down the space, but her door is closed, a silver nameplate visible just next to it. (Regina Mills, Senior Brand Strategist. So that's what she does all day - and night.) He can see her inside, on the phone, shifting papers around on her desk as she talks. Ashley lifts a hand as if to knock on the door, but Robin halts her.

"Wait," he says. "I don't want to disturb her if she's in the middle of a call. Is there somewhere I can wait?"

"Oh, sure," Ashley tells him genially. "You can try the break room - Henry's probably there with Mary Margaret."

"With who?"

"Mary Margaret," she repeats, and then she lowers her voice and leans in to add, "The boss's daughter."

From the description, Robin expects a young thing. A teenager, or barely older, but when he walks into the break room, he finds Henry at the table playing a rousing card game of some sort with a woman in her mid-to-late twenties and a man who's slightly older. Not the father, he guesses, considering the woman, with her dark cap of hair, is about as pale as they come, and the man is darker skinned. And though he's older, he doesn't look like he could possibly be old enough to be Mary Margaret's father.

"Hi, Robin!" Henry greets as he walks in, Ashley saying her goodbyes and heading home for the day.

"Hello, Henry."

"Come play with us!" the lad invites, pointing to the last empty chair at their small table, between Mary Margaret (who gives a friendly wave to encourage his approach) and the man who's now glanced up, unsmiling, and given him a once-over before turning back to his cards and shuffling them around a bit. Well, then.

Robin takes the proffered seat, and the woman sets down her clutch of cards, holding a hand out to him in greeting. "So you're Robin," she says knowingly. Robin shakes her hand as she introduces herself as Mary Margaret Blanchard, then he does the same with their third player, who he learns is named Sidney Glass (the man smiles then, perfectly polite now as he says it's nice to meet him). After all the pleasantries, Mary Margaret teases, "Henry's been talking about you all afternoon; I'm starting to worry I may lose my regular babysitting gig."

So she's both the boss's daughter and the sitter. Interesting.

Robin gives a short chuckle, shaking his head and assuring her, "I doubt that," before asking, "So what exactly are we playing here?"

"Fluxx," Henry tells him matter-of-factly. "It's..." He frowns, working his pursed lips before shaking his head and saying, "It makes sense when you play it. Here, just take these cards…" He grabs three cards off the top of a face-down deck and hands them to Robin. "And every turn you draw one and play one. Except right now-" He points to another card nearby with  _Pick Two_  emblazoned down the side. "Right now, we have to pick two and play one, because this card is down."

"Alright…" Robin frowns down at his new hand of cards, still utterly lost. They seem to be on a Wizard of Oz theme - he's clutching a Scarecrow and a Cowardly Lion, and something that says 3 Best Friends.

Mary Margaret takes pity on him with a little chuckle, explaining the rules of the game, the different types of cards and their corresponding colors. Keepers and goals and actions, rule cards and surprises. Each turn, you draw one and play one, unless there's a rule card in play that states otherwise. Keepers stay in play once you've put them down, and have to be in play for you to win the game, but they can be stolen or compromised. It sounds... complicated? But perhaps like it shouldn't be.

"If they have black, like this," she drops a finger to the Wicked Witch card in front of her, "They're called Creepers. You have to play them as soon as you get them and they suck."

Henry snorts a little laugh at that. "You could still get a good goal!" he encourages, earning a slightly defeated look for his troubles.

She huffs a little, concedes, "A few goals require a Creeper, but usually you can't win as long as you have one. You win the game if the Keepers you have in play match the current goal card - but someone could play a new goal every turn, so… good luck."

"So it's all random, then?" Robin questions, because if the goal can change at any time then how do you plan? It's Sidney who answers this time.

"For the most part," he confirms, his tone even and a bit detached as he squints between his hand, his cards in play, the goal card. "You can try to set things up for yourself, but be prepared to be thwarted on a regular basis if you do. Just make sure you read your cards, and you'll be fine."

"Yup," Henry concurs with a nod, adding, "And it's my turn."

Henry drops a new goal card on the table, something about Wicked Minions, and Sidney lets out a groan. "Damnit, I almost had it," he mutters, earning a mild look of consternation from Mary Margaret.

"Language, Sidney," she warns, before leaning forwarding and reading off the conditions of the new goal. Robin takes a moment to peruse his hand while Sidney draws a card and waffles over what to play. As chance would have it, the three cards Robin is holding are a goal and two of its requirements. He only needs a Tin Man to win.

His round yields a Bucket of Water and a Play 5 card, neither of which are of any use to him, so he plays his Lion and tries to subtly peruse the other cards in play. No Tin Man to be found.

"We're still going to be able to go, right?" Henry asks suddenly after his next turn. "The music store won't be closed?"

"We've plenty of time. They're open until ten," Robin assures him, putting down his Scarecrow after picking up a Rules Reset and a That's Mine! - a card that lets him steal a Keeper from another player at any moment in the game, his turn or not. Excellent. "And if it gets too late, maybe we'll ask your mum if I can take you, just the two of us."

"I'm sure she won't be too much longer," Mary Margaret soothes. "Dad won't leave until she's off the phone, and I know he didn't want to stay too late."

Mollified by the double reassurance, Henry settles back in his seat, asking, "Are you gonna come over tonight and show me how to play some more, or are we just going shopping?" while Mary Margaret changes the goal again.

Robin taps his cards against the tabletop and answers, "I suppose that's up to your mum."

"She said it's up to you," Henry tells him, and Robin lets out a little chuckle. (Henry changes the rules: now they're to draw three cards every turn.)

"We'll see what she says once we're done, alright?" he compromises, not wanting to commit Regina to anything she may not want after a long day of work, and not wanting to set Henry up for disappointment either.

Sidney snaps his card down to the table with a bit of force. The Tin Man.

He looks to Robin. "Your turn."

Robin smirks and drops a card immediately, telling Sidney, "That's mine," and reaching for the Tin Man, adding it to the spread in front of him. He draws his three cards, but it's just for show. He changes the goal to his 3 Best Friends, and declares smugly, "And I win."

"Nice!" Henry compliments, reaching for all the used cards and pulling them into a pile.

"Well done," Mary Margaret smiles, but a glance at Sidney reveals a clenched jaw and terse silence. It appears the man's a sore loser.

"Beginner's luck," Robin dismisses with a shrug, helping to shuffle all the cards and then letting Henry deal them out again.

The next game is over quickly - four turns in, Sidney manages to win it off a goal card Henry had played just moments before. At the very least, it seems to improve the man's mood.

**.::.**

It's nearly eight by the time Regina finishes her phone call, and the delay in her evening plans has her on edge and annoyed.

But what's done is done, and there's nothing she can do about it now. So she closes up shop as fast as she can, answering three emails, clearing a few completed items out of her to-do list, and refreshing herself with tomorrow's (thankfully light) schedule before shutting down her computer. She runs her fingers through her hair, refreshes her lipstick and then dons her coat and purse before heading out of her office, flicking the light off as she goes.

"Done for the night?"

It's Leo, emerging from his office now, too, briefcase in hand, his jacket folded over one arm and with his usual blithe smile.

"Yes, finally," Regina sighs pleasantly.

"Everything went well, I hope?"

She nods, assures him, "Fire's put out, everyone's happy again."

"Except you," he says knowingly, and she tries to smooth the pinch of her brows, smiles tightly before admitting that she'd had plans. "Nothing that can't be rescheduled, I hope?"

"No, nothing like that," she concedes as they reach the break room. The sight that greets them both amuses and confuses her. Mary Margaret, Henry, Robin and Sidney, deep in a game of Fluxx. Henry doesn't even glance up when she walks in, busy studying his hand.

"Well, it looks like you guys are having fun," Regina says in greeting, Mary Margaret's face immediately brightening at the sight of her father trailing behind.

"Are you ready for dinner, Princess?" he asks, and Regina watches a flicker of disappointment cross Henry's face.

"We're in the middle of a round," he protests, but they've been here for two hours, so she knows her son has had plenty of play time.

"One of many, I'm sure," Regina says, before the younger woman has to be the one to deliver the hard truth. "You've played plenty - Ms. Blanchard has dinner plans to get to."

Mary Margaret, ever sweet, reaches over and squeezes Henry's hand, assuring him, "We'll play again next time, okay?"

Henry nods, and sighs, and gathers the cards together as Regina turns her attention to the men in the room. Robin is helping Henry with the cards, so she looks to her coworker first.

"I'm surprised you're still here, Sidney. You're usually done by now."

Not that he has no reason to be here, he works here, but it's gotten awfully late, and she knows if it was her, she'd want to be out of here as early as possible. But then, Sidney doesn't have a child to go home to, and she hasn't heard him talk about any romantic prospects in months. Maybe he really has nothing better to do.

"Well, I got pulled into a game," he explains. "They needed a third player, and then I couldn't tear myself away." He glances between Regina, Henry and Robin and then adds, "But I should get out of your hair, now that the game is ending." He's warm and friendly as he tells Henry thank you for teaching him something new, and he gives Robin a nod of acknowledgement before he rises. "See you in the morning, Regina."

"You, too," she returns, paying him little mind as he leaves the break room. Instead, she's asking Henry, "Do you still need to eat?"

"No, we stopped on the way here," Mary Margaret tells her, taking the game from Henry once it's all packed into its little box. "There's some cold fried chicken in the fridge if you want some."

She's about to refuse when Henry adds, "And extra biscuits!"

She glances at Robin (and oh, that shirt brings out the blue in his eyes in a way that makes her heart stutter), and says, "I don't want to take up your whole evening; it's already been over an hour-"

"Don't be silly," he dismisses with a shake of his head. "I've nothing to do tonight; don't starve on my account."

"Maybe just a bite," she concedes, because she really is hungry, heading for the fridge and glancing back at her boss. "But don't let us keep you. I can close up."

Leo nods, tells her thank you, and while she retrieves the box of fast food chicken he and Mary Margaret say their goodbyes to Robin and Henry.

And then it's just the three of them.

**.::.**

Robin watches Regina as she grabs the food, and a roll of paper towel, a bottle of something from the fridge, her hands full as she stops, frowns.

"Do either of you need a drink? We have soda, iced tea, Pellegrino..."

"D'you have a Coke?" he asks, and she nods, hesitating when Henry asks for one, too.

"Okay, but half," she concedes, adding, "I don't need you up all night  _again_ ," with a pointed look at Robin.

"It wasn't  _all_ night," he mutters feeling a little twinge of guilt. But then she's reaching into the fridge for said Cokes, trying to juggle everything at once, and it's a bit ridiculous. "Here, let me help," he insists, rising and moving toward her, glad for her grateful smile. It seems he's not truly in the doghouse for that late bedtime after all.

He takes the Cokes from her hands, and the bottle of Pellegrino she'd grabbed for herself, heading back to the table while she makes for the cupboards in search of something. He cracks open the cans for himself and Henry, twists the cap off her bottle and places it in front of the empty seat where Mary Margaret had been. By the time he finishes, Regina has joined them at the table with her box of chicken, the roll of paper towel, a little jar of honey and a plastic knife.

She makes herself a little spread, a sheet of paper towel, two biscuits, and a piece of chicken breast she begins peeling the skin off of, making a little pile in the corner of her impromptu place mat.

He sips his Coke, watches her strip the meat, and then Henry speaks up with, "Mom, I asked Robin about coming home with us afterward and he said it's up to you."

Regina pauses in her task and frowns.

"Oh… sweetheart, it's already late," she tells him, voice tinged with the reluctant gentleness of a parent disappointing her child. "By the time we finish at the store and drive home, it'll be almost time for you to get ready for bed. It's going to have to wait 'til another night."

Henry slouches down into his chair, pulls a sulk, and Regina sighs, shakes her head and reaches for a biscuit, splitting it with her knife as she chides, "He'll be over in a week, Henry. You can wait a few days. In the meantime, you can practice what he taught you last week."

"But that was a whole week ago," the boy nearly whines. "I don't remember all of it. That's what I wanted him to show me tonight."

"Henry," she warns, and Robin watches the exchange as it volleys back and forth. He doesn't want to step on her parenting - God knows it drives him batty when people do that to him. But perhaps he can defuse a bit of the tension before it ends in a tantrum or an increase in that tightness around Regina's eyes.

"We can go over it while we're looking at guitars," Robin offers, drawing both of their attention (Regina's for only a moment, she's busy spreading a thin layer of honey onto her biscuit, then beginning to tear off hunks of meat to sandwich between). "You'll want to play a few anyway, see how they feel. I can show you the chords again while we do that."

Henry's face goes hopeful.

"Yeah?"

Robin nods, tells him, "Of course."

"Excellent," the boy declares with a grin, reaching for his Coke and taking a big gulp.

Regina gives Robin a little smile, mouths  _Thank you_.

He nods, gives a glance to the bits of crispy fried chicken skin on the edge of her paper towel and wonders if she'd mind him commandeering her scraps. He needn't even ask - she follows his gaze and smirks, slides the paper towel a few inches in his direction in invitation. Robin doesn't need to be told twice.

While she bites into that little chicken and biscuit sandwich she's concocted, Robin nabs bits of salty, greasy skin and munches on them. They're even still a bit crispy.

There's silence for a moment, but the comfortable kind, and then Regina asks Henry, "Are you sure you had enough to eat? I can't finish all of this."

"Yeah, I had a whole meal for myself," Henry assured her. "And a cookie. I'm stuffed."

Regina's eyes roll, and she mutters something sarcastic about being glad Mary Margaret is looking after the boy's nutritional needs, then looks to Robin, shifting the box to his side of the paper towel.

"Help yourself," she invites. "If you want more than... that."

She's glancing at the skin with disdain, and Robin gives a little scoff. "The skin's the best part," he argues, smirking in response to her  _If you enjoy grease, salt, and absolutely zero nutritional value_ , as he reaches for a full piece. There's a drumstick and a breast, so he reaches for the latter, figuring she'll want the juicier bit.

He's in the midst of telling her there are more important things in life than proper nutrition when he glances up and notices the look on her face - she's eyeing the piece he's just grabbed, an almost anxious, hesitant look on her face, her lips pressed together as if to bite back whatever it is she might actually want to say ( _what a rare occurrence, that,_  he thinks).

"Is this alright?" Robin asks her.

"I prefer the white meat," she admits. So much for being a gentleman.

"Ah, I see." He drops the breast back into the box and grabs the drum. "I figured cold fast food chicken was dry enough, I'd leave you the good parts. Seems I was wrong about what the good parts were."

She smiles then, and it's soft and warm and makes his heart pound just a little. God, she's a picture.

"Y'know what, keep it," she tells him, lifting her little sandwich in the direction of her mouth again. "Have both. I'll just have this - we should get going soon anyway."

"You won't be hungry?" he asks, loath to take food out of her mouth. After all, he's already had something resembling dinner (could certainly pound down a few bits of chicken without trouble, but he doesn't  _need_  them).

She's shaking her head, though, waving him toward the food and insisting, "I'll be fine until we get home. I can eat some more then. They're all yours."

Robin takes her up on her offer, and Henry decides he's hungry after all, stealing the chicken leg while Robin finishes the breast.

**.::.**

There's something about a man with a guitar.

Regina couldn't say what it is, and she knows she's not alone in her attraction, so she's never thought too hard on it – but there's  _something_  about a man with a guitar. And something about a man with children – a man with  _her_  child in particular. A man who smiles, and guides, who patiently adjusts Henry's fingers on the strings, and grins proudly when her son finally manages not to mute a chord on the first guitar they try, telling him, "See, you've not forgotten."

It… does things to her. Things that make her think perhaps asking Robin to come into her home once a week, sit on her sofa, be kind to her son and play his guitar was maybe not the wisest idea for her hormones.

But she's an adult, she can be mature and level-headed, and ignore the way her stomach dips when he takes the guitar from Henry and plays a few effortless chords himself. Something with actual rhythm, something that sounds like music. She takes a deep breath, pushes down on the attraction she feels and asks, "What do we think? Did we get lucky on the first try?"

Robin glances up at her (she's standing nearby, giving them a little space while they sit and play), shrugs his shoulders, his mouth tipping into a little frown. "The action's a bit high, I think. That can be adjusted, but I'm sure there's something here that'll be a bit easier for him to play." He glances to Henry and says, "Those fingertips will be sore enough if you're practicing right. No need to make it even harder on you. We'll try another."

They do. This one is jet black, which Henry loves (it's the reason he wanted to try it in the first place), but Robin says something about tone quality, something about this brand being a solid choice, but quite frankly not his favorite. Something about the neck seeming a bit wide for young hands. Henry nods and says solemnly that it just doesn't  _feel_  as good as the last one did. Regina is fairly certain he's lying, that he's trying to sound like he can tell the difference between the two, when in actuality he has no better idea what makes a good guitar than she herself does. It's sweet. When Robin sneaks a smirk in her direction, she thinks maybe he agrees.

"Well then, let's try another. Perhaps that one over there."

The one he points at is, frankly, gorgeous. A red gradient bleeding in from the edges that reminds her of a sunset, an ornate pickguard etched with flowers and hummingbirds. It's hanging just a bit further along the wall than the others they'd tried, but before Robin gets two steps toward it, Henry is wrinkling his nose and saying, "It's kinda girly."

Robin pauses and frowns, tells him, "It's a classic. Why don't we give it a chance?"

He glances to Regina, who nods encouragingly, and then continues on his way.

"There are more important things than appearances," she reminds Henry gently as Robin retrieves the instrument. "And I'm pretty sure a guitar can't be girly."

"That one is." He points to a hot pink one, with a glittery pickguard, and Regina frowns. He has her there.

"So in comparison, the one Robin wants you to try is positively gender-neutral," she reasons. "And besides, the design doesn't necessarily reflect the quality."

"So the pretty one could be pretty crappy," he surmises, giving her one of those looks, the kind that makes her fear just a little bit what he'll be like when he hits his full-blown, sass-filled teenage years.

"Language, Henry," she reprimands mildly, before pointing out, "And yes, it could be, but I don't think Robin would suggest it if it was, do you?"

Henry shrugs, and concedes, "No. He's pretty smart. He'll know. That's why we brought him, right?"

And yes, she supposes, it is. She's struck then, and not for the first time, how willingly Henry trusts him. How much he seems to admire the man, or at the very least think he's someone worth getting excited for, someone whose opinion is of value. But for the first time, she considers how that must feel to Robin. To be trusted carte blanche, after all he's done. Even if it's by a boy who hasn't a clue of the reasons the man's life has been so turned upside down.

Maybe, she thinks, this will be good for him, too. And then she thinks maybe she's being awfully presumptuous - that she shouldn't put motives where motives are not. Shouldn't put meaning where there is none.

Robin comes back with the guitar, but this time he doesn't give it to Henry right away. No, this time he sits and fiddles for a moment himself, gets a feel for things. He takes a little longer with this guitar than he had with the others, lingers over it for a few moments of singular focus, his lower lip caught in his teeth, his brow furrowed slightly. For that moment, it's as if she and Henry have left the room, as if she's watching something private. He holds this guitar differently, with a bit more reverence, although she imagines it wouldn't be obvious if one weren't looking so hard. (Why is she looking so hard?)

He has nice hands.

The way they press and strum, and move along the fretboard, the way they nimbly pluck at strings, picking out a little lick that has Henry's eyes lighting up.

"Can you teach me to do that?" Henry asks, breaking the spell. Robin chuckles, glancing up at him then and nodding.

"Eventually. But not quite yet. First, you need to learn the basics." He shifts the guitar from his grasp to Henry's, then says, "Don't let the flowers throw you. I think you'll like this one. It's the same make I had for quite some time."

Ah. That explains it.

Henry takes the guitar, adjusts it in his hold and tries to play his chords. They're better, easier, she thinks. Or maybe he's just more determined - either way, they ring more clearly, and she can see what Robin meant about tone quality. This is a good instrument.

"I like this one," Henry tells her, meeting her eyes for half a second before bending his head back down and focusing on his fingers, his tongue caught between his teeth as he focuses.

Robin glances up then, too, shooting her a pleased wink, and getting a slight lift of her brow in reply. This is the one, then, it seems.

Regina sneaks a glance at the price tag - just a bit under three hundred dollars. A little high, maybe, but not more than she's willing to pay for a quality instrument. The boys - the men - Robin and Henry seem to be having fun, figuring out a rhythm, and practicing switching between chords for a few minutes, so Regina pulls her phone from her purse and pretends to leave them unobserved, all the while sneaking glances out of the corner of her eye. It's an exercise in restraint – they're two peas in a pod all of a sudden (and if there's a twinge of disappointment in her chest that she'd never managed to get this level of camaraderie out of him over the piano, well, that's selfish, and Henry is his own person, not something for her to mold to her liking, so she lets it go), and the sight of them bent toward each other, the sight of Henry's proud grin and the deep set of dimples in Robin's answering one has her lips wanting to curve. Has her wanting to chuckle and shake her head.

"Here, you play something," Henry encourages, handing the guitar back to Robin. "A real song."

Robin takes the guitar with a little shrug, fitting it to his body like it simply belongs there, like another limb, like something… vital. And then he begins to play, singing along softly (they are in public, after all, in a place of business), something about a girl, about love, and she's reminded again of how much she likes his voice. Reminded of that night, it seems so long ago now, sitting on her piano bench, the two of them making something real, something vivid and alive for just a little while. The way it had made her heart pound and her skin tingle, the way he'd looked at her, the way he'd practically begged her to play a second song.

He's been missing this, she realizes with a jolt.

Cut off from more than love and family, but his passion, too. What does he fill his days with now, she wonders? The hours between waking up and going to work, the days he doesn't have his son. It was this before - she knows that, she can see it in the way his shoulders loosen, in the way the permanent knit between his brows has softened, the effortlessness with which he brings a song to life.

As she watches him play, she feels a sort of tight, choking sympathy for him. She'd figured whatever dumb thing he'd done to make some quick cash had been his first desperate grasp at trying to pull his family back above water, but it occurs to her now that he's a musician who hocked his guitar for cash. He'd have to have been desperate to give that up. And the way he plays this one…

After a moment, she realizes that she's lost all pretense of distraction, that she's holding her phone loosely in her fingers but the screen has gone blank. She's just watching now, boldly, her breath half-caught as she sees him - really sees  _him_  for maybe the first time. And she thinks she might see a little bit of herself, the part of her that sits down at the piano at night and bleeds out onto the keys.

He finishes his song and Henry nods approvingly and declares, "Cool," then looks at her and says, "Mom, can we get this one?"

It draws Robin's gaze back to her as well, and she straightens a little, tightening her grip on her phone and clearing her throat before she agrees, "I don't think there's any other choice, really. This one clearly wants to come home with you."

He's over the moon, but Robin interrupts his excitement with a chuckling, "Why don't you two go tell the salesman this is the one you're taking, and let him find you a case and a strap and all that. Don't let him talk you into more than a gig bag, though - you've no need."

"What're you gonna do?" Henry asks.

"I've got to find a guitar for myself," Robin reminds. "The one we played wasn't mine, remember?"

"Oh. Right." Henry's fingers fiddle with the end of the guitar before he asks, "Why don't you get one like this? Like mine? You said you had this one before, right? And we could match!"

It doesn't take the slight shuttering of the light behind Robin's eyes for Regina to know the answer to that question - the man certainly doesn't have three hundred bucks to drop on a guitar right now. He gaze drops to the guitar still resting on his lap and he shifts it slightly, his palm running once along the body. Regina has the sudden insane urge to blurt that she'll get two. That they should match. It would be fun for them. She holds her tongue, though, bites down on the tip of it rather than embarrass him or commit to something as ridiculous as treating a man she doesn't know  _that_  well to a three hundred dollar guitar.

Even if she can see how badly he wants it, plain as day there on his face right alongside the disappointment that he's going to have to leave it behind.

But he doesn't let anything on to Henry, just tells him, "That we could," and, "But I think I might be in the market for something new this time around. You two go get all set up. I'll join you in a moment."

Henry doesn't need any more urging, too excited to deck out his new instrument, no doubt. He heads off for the wall of straps in all sorts of patterns and materials, and Regina follows, but she doesn't miss Robin heading for the bargain instruments as she walks away.

When she catches up with Henry he's weighing his options - leather or fabric, smiley faces or cartoons or skulls (she nixes that last one) - but her attention keeps sliding back to Robin across the shop. To the way his mouth draws into a scowl as he tests out one guitar and then another. A third. None of them wow him, she can tell that even from here, but he seems to settle on one, playing for a minute or so and then inspecting it from head to bottom.

He presses his mouth into a line, shoulders lifting and falling with a sigh. He looks their way - looks at the guitar Henry is still holding onto for dear life, unwilling just yet to relinquish it to the salesman who is helping him match straps (they'll probably end up with the most expensive one, as distracted as she is) - then catches her watching and looks away again, straightening a little and heading for another sales associate.

And suddenly she's moving, telling Henry she'll be right back, to pick whatever he wants, and crossing the store in quick, purposeful strides, cutting Robin off two feet from his goal and blurting, "Work it off."

He scowls, adjusts his grip on the guitar he was holding. "Excuse me?"

"You don't like this guitar."

"It's fine," he argues.

"Yes," she agrees. "It's fine. But it's not what you really want."

"Regina-"

"You lit up," she tells him, one hand reaching out and settling on his wrist, squeezing there. "The minute you held Henry's guitar, it was like it just… belonged. And he'd get a kick out of it - having matching guitars. He thinks you're pretty great."

Robin scoffs softly, ducking his head as he shakes it back and forth. "He's a child."

"He's not wrong," she says, surprising them both - him enough to have him lifting blue eyes to brown again. There's a moment of stillness, a moment where she becomes acutely aware of the warmth of his wrist under her fingertips but can't bring herself to drop her hand (that would only make things  _more_  awkward, wouldn't it?). And then, "Get the hummingbird. Consider it your payment for the first six weeks."

He opens his mouth, and she's sure he's going to say no again, but he doesn't. He pauses, stands there open-mouthed and conflicted, glancing toward Henry and then finally speaking. "It's more than I need."

"There's more to need than necessity," she finds herself saying. Robin swallows heavily, but doesn't respond, still pensively studying Henry's back and the instrument they both know Robin wants to leave with. He's wrestling with his pride, wrestling with what's right. So she drives the final nail in the coffin by asking, "Robin, do you want your guitar back?"

His breath explodes out, a heavy rush from his lungs as his shoulders sag. His  _Very much_  is soft, little more than a whisper, but he's more firm when he insists, "But it's too much. You don't have to-"

"I want to. And I'll be paying the money either way," she reasons with a shrug, finally dropping her hand and playing for nonchalance as much as she can. She doesn't want him to feel like she's taking pity on him. This isn't pity, it's… It's something else. Something deeper. "Give me six weeks for free, and let me do this. You need that guitar. Not this one," she taps her finger on the head of the one he's still holding. "That one."

He needs the money, too. That three hundred dollars could go a long way toward groceries, or child support. It's not the most sensible of offers - trying to convince him to work for free, in exchange for something he could get for half the money he'll be losing out on. But she just feels this… need.

When he asks her, "You're sure?", she knows he'll agree, and so she smiles - grins, really - and nods.

"I'm positive," Regina assures, reaching down to draw the guitar from his hand and smirking, "Now please go make sure that salesman isn't robbing me blind with things Henry doesn't actually need. I'll have them pull another of those guitars for you."

Robin bobs his head and then reaches for her arm, his palm warm even through the material of her coat as he meets her eyes and tells her sincerely, "Thank you."

Regina lifts her shoulders, drops them, and says, "I think it's time something worked out for you, don't you?"

His answering chuckle is almost humorless, and she doesn't quite catch what he mutters under his breath as he turns from her, but she thinks it sounds something like, "About bloody time."

They leave half an hour later with two guitars and two gig bags, a stand for Henry's guitar, picks in all different weights and new strings, a strap decorated with apples of all things for Henry.

Robin thanks her profusely once more as he places his new guitar carefully into his car, and once more she dismisses it as nothing, even though they both know it is not nothing, not to him, not right now.

And if she'd had any doubts of that, they're erased at half past two on Friday afternoon when a bouquet of roses arrives in her office, a thank you card nestled between the blooms.


	12. Chapter 12

Robin is in love.

Desperately, passionately, wondrously in love.

He hasn't felt this in months, nearly half a year now, this kick of his pulse, this ease and comfort, this  _rightness_.

He sits on his bed, guitar cradled on his lap, plucking at the strings, reacquainting himself with an instrument so similar to and yet so different from the one he'd had for years. It's a reasonable facsimile, though, and he will take it. He will take it gladly. He is so desperately, wondrously in love with it.

He spares a moment of thought for Regina, for her generosity that makes him feel guilt and gratitude in equal measure. He'd sent a bouquet a few days earlier, wanting to give her some sort of thank you, even though it was probably foolish to spend money on something so frivolous as flowers when he was trying so hard to right his finances. But he couldn't let her just  _do_  this, spend all that money she'd had no need to spend - even if he's going to work it off, even if it's technically payment... She had framed it as a practical move, but they'd both known better. He doesn't need  _this_  guitar to teach Henry, and she certainly hadn't needed to pay for it. He could have gotten something a third of the price, and it would have done him fine. Would have been far more practical.

He's not sure exactly why she'd done it, why it had been so important to her - but clearly it had been. He'd seen it in the way she'd looked at him, the intensity of those brown eyes, her insistence. She'd just... known. Had known, somehow, how deeply he had yearned for this instrument right here. This one in particular. A daft, romantic part of him thinks maybe she'd recognized something in him in that moment, something she knew, something familiar to her. But that's silly, he thinks. Silly, and indulgent, and frankly a dangerous way to be thinking about her.

He needs to remember who she is - a well-to-do woman who works in a sleek office, who has money to spare that he does not, who can afford to be generous. Whose parents do things like take a month-long holiday. Whose parents he had stolen from.

He's been spending too much time with her.

Not that they've been spending time together, not really, but he needs to remember that she's not a woman he can share breakfast and dinner with, not a woman he ought to flirt with, not a woman he can afford to get entangled with. He should stay away as much as he can.

Avoiding her entirely is out of the question - he works for her now. But it doesn't need to be more than that. He's in her employ, and that's all. He can admire her, can think of her privately, can be polite and even charming, but he cannot let it go further than that. He cannot entertain the temptation to knock on her door and ask if Henry would like to spend some time with the dog, cannot pop over to borrow a couple of eggs for Roland's breakfast when there's cereal and milk already on hand, cannot find reason to meander the back alley on the days she does her shopping and comes home laden with bags she could use a hand carrying.

He hasn't any right to her, and no right to lead her on, and so he scrubs his palm across his face, puts her out of his mind and focuses on his guitar, on figuring out a lesson plan for her boy, on ignoring the tenderness in his fingertips from his softened callouses. He'll take the dull ache, the irritation, will carry it with him happily and use it as a reminder that he is doing better. That his life is righting itself, slowly, bit by bit.

Now all he has to do is make sure he does nothing to screw it up.

**.::.**

She cooks for three.

On the first night of Henry's guitar lessons, dinner is wild mushroom risotto, and Regina makes a point to prepare more than she needs. It's not charity, not exactly, it's just that they hadn't gotten home until nearly seven, delayed by a last-minute, post-school grocery run that had gotten a little out of hand. Robin had showed up as they were carting in bags from the car, freshly showered, his hair still damp, smelling of soap and shampoo. It had been… very distracting.

He'd been out for a run, something she wasn't entirely aware he did, but maybe he was picking up some new habits. And it's not as though she keeps an eye out for his habits in the first place - not that she would admit to, anyway.

So he'd turned up at seven on the nose, helped them carry in the last bag of groceries, and when Henry had made a comment about being hungry and Regina had unearthed an apple for him to scarf down quickly before his lesson, there had been a moment where Robin looked at it like a man starved.

"Do you want one?" she'd asked, brow tipped up in amusement, and he'd sheepishly confessed to having gotten a bit turned around on his run and getting home a full twenty minutes later than he'd planned to. He hadn't had a chance to eat anything yet, so yes, if she was offering, he'd gladly take it.

After that it had seemed natural, a no-brainer, to make enough food for all of them. He was hungry, and she had plenty, and, well, there may have been a small kernel of guilt in her chest over the fact that she's not technically paying him for his time. Not tonight, and not for another nearly two months. Sure, she'd bought him the guitar, but they both knew - both know - that it had been a sentimental, impractical choice. He needed the money more than he needed  _that_ guitar in particular.

But he'd murmured a low  _Thank you again_  when Henry had raced into the powder room to wash his hands post-apple, and she'd felt the same satisfied flush she had when she'd swiped her bank card at the music store a week ago. So she doesn't regret her decision, not really.

But she'll feed him. Something small, some little way she can offset the money her impulsive sentimentality has cost them.

So she stands and she stirs, and stirs, and stirs, and listens to their lesson. Listens to his voice, his patient advice, Henry's clumsy chords mingling with Robin's surer ones. She wonders where  _he_  learned to play, who taught him. Thinks maybe she'll ask, one of these days. Some night when things are a bit less rushed.

When she finishes cooking, she grabs a Tupperware from the cabinet and fills it with a generous portion, hoping he's not one of those people who hates mushrooms. (Daniel had hated mushrooms, she thinks absently, missing him fiercely for a moment when Henry chooses just then to laugh from the other room. He has his father's laugh...) Then she busies herself with setting the table, with fixing a salad, with kneading the back of her neck, rolling her head side to side. She could really use a good massage...

**.::.**

That's what she's doing when Robin pokes his head in to say goodbye - standing in the kitchen, one hand on the back of a chair, the other squeezing at the join of neck and shoulder, eyes shut, lips pouty, brow pinched. Robin pauses a moment when he sees her, struck by how lovely she is.

Shit.

He tells himself to get it together, not to focus on how petite she looks now she's toed her shoes off, or just how that top button of her blouse strains a bit when she breathes in and sighs out.

He needs to get laid, needs something more than his own hand to keep him company at night. It seems months of nothing but his own attentions has his thoughts skating toward the gutter more often than not.

Best be off, then (and then beat off, he thinks guiltily).

He clears his throat to let her know he's there, and she snaps out of her momentary reverie, her cheeks tingeing just a bit pink as she straightens her spine, drops both hands to the back of that chair.

"All done?" she asks with a polite smile.

"For this week," he confirms with a nod. "He did quite well; he's a bright boy."

"His father's son," she says, a bit of good-natured teasing to her voice.

"I'm sure he gets it from both sides," Robin answers automatically, taking the opening he's not sure she presented on purpose. That smile widens a little despite her best efforts to hide it by turning away suddenly and reaching for a container left on the counter. Right then. "I'm headed out, just wanted to be sure I said goodnight."

"Wait–" she says suddenly, turning back, clutching the container of food for the four steps it takes her to cross the kitchen, then holding it out to him. "Take some dinner."

**.::.**

He frowns at her, tilting his head and asking, "Come again?"

"Take it," she insists, waggling the container slightly, nervous all of a sudden for reasons she cannot explain. "It's wild mushroom risotto – I made too much. And I did keep you from your dinner."

"My poor sense of direction kept me from dinner," he corrects easily, looking equal parts touched and confused by her offering. "I don't want to put you out."

Regina shakes her head.

"I insist. We have plenty, and it's not as though I'm paying you for your time."

He lifts the guitar he's clutching and reminds her, "You already have."

She has to give him that, conceding, "Fair enough. But if you go home right now, what will dinner be?"

His easy expression turns a bit sheepish as he admits, "Spaghetti-O's and toast. Unless I save the Spaghetti-O's for Roland this weekend."

Regina makes a face. "You feed him that crap? Do I need to come by with food on Saturday, too?"

"I feed him many things," Robin assures, just enough of an edge in his voice to remind her that his ability to care for his son is a sore subject. One she probably shouldn't go poking at. "He's well taken care of. You needn't go out of your way. And really, you don't have to send me home with dinner. I don't want to take food out of your mouth."

"My mouth is fine," she assures, reaching for his hand and dragging it up to the Tupperware. She'll force her food on him if she has to - but she keeps her voice pleasant, flashes the smile that usually gets her her way. "Please, take it. I like cooking for people. And Henry's already tried all my recipes, he's no good for garnering praise anymore."

He grins at that, and oh, those dimples. "Ah, so you're doing this in hopes of flattery, is that it?"

"Exactly," she teases back, pleased when his fingers brush hers as they curl around the plastic. "My fragile ego could use a boost."

"Well, then, I suppose I've no choice but to take it."

Perfect. She wins.

They're both smirking, both fighting grins when she tells him, "You can bring the container back next week."

He nods, finally pulls it from her grasp, gives her a thank you, and another goodnight, and then he's gone.

**.::.**

She's an excellent cook. So good, in fact, that after two bites he takes the risotto up to his room, leaving John to watch telly alone so that there are no witnesses to the way Robin positively devours the portion of food she'd made him, the occasional moan of pure gastronomical bliss leaking from him as he chews. He should have known she'd be a good cook - it seems she does everything well.

He'd give Henry lessons for free indefinitely if only she'd pay him in home-cooked meals. For half a moment, he considers ringing her up and telling her that he'll find some way to work off a meal for him and Roland this weekend, but he's no beggar, and it seems a bit… much.

He does text her though, reaches for his phone and types her a short message:  _Verdict: domestic goddess. I think you've put some sort of sorcery into the pot._

His phone pings a moment later:  _No magic, dear. Just skill._

_Rather a lot of it. I may show up hungry more often._

She doesn't respond to that last one for a while, long enough that he begins to regret sending it. So, naturally, he sends another:  _When do you need this container back? I can run it by whenever you'd like._

_Next week is fine. I have plenty more in the meantime. Henry had a good time tonight - he's been showing off his dented fingers proudly all evening. Thank you._

_It was my pleasure. I've needed a good excuse to play again. Looking forward to the next time._

_Us too. Have a good week._

_You as well_.

And that's that. He doesn't hear from her again for the rest of the night, but that's just fine. He stays tucked up in his room, fiddles a bit more with his guitar, has a quick call with Marian about their plans for Roland this weekend - the duration of his stay, his pick-up and drop-off. All very civil and… detached. Their new normal, it seems. Polite, but distant. He drops back to his pillows with a heaving sigh and wonders if that will ever change.

He very much doubts it, but perhaps he'll be pleasantly surprised.

For a few minutes, he just lies there, staring at the light in the ceiling above him until his eyes start to water and there's a blue spot in his vision when he finally looks elsewhere.

He's tired, and a bit bored. But not so tired nor so bored that sleep is tugging at him. His mind wanders, drifts, ends up back on Regina for a moment or two, back on that top she'd been wearing today and its straining buttons.

He shouldn't think about that.

Shouldn't, but will, because he's a man with needs, and she's a beautiful woman, and what harm will it do to pull off to the thought of her? Wouldn't be the first time, anyway. He strips down, tugs off his shirt and his jeans, pushes his boxer-briefs down and off and debates whether he ought to lock the door, but it's not as though John has a habit of walking in on him without knocking, so really why bother?

He takes himself in hand then, strokes himself lazily to full hardness, imagining her as he does - the way she was a few weeks ago, sweat-sheened and flushed, tits bouncing. But not from running tonight - no, tonight he pictures her atop him, and those tits are unfettered, all of her is, bare for him from tip to toe and moaning at every plunge down around his hard cock.

Much better.

He feels only the smallest twinge of guilt at how she might feel to be thought of this way, but then his fantasy Regina is cupping herself and sighing, and he lets it go.

**.::.**

He needn't have felt it in the first place, to be honest, because he's hardly alone.

Henry is put to bed, the kitchen is spotless, the living room straightened, and Regina is in bed with a book. Not a good one, not by any means. Well, that's not true. It's well-written, but it's nothing she'd pull out in public. A romance novel, tawdry and explicit. Something she saves for reading late at night, before bed, when she's finished all her tasks for the day but isn't quite ready for sleep. Something to settle her mind.

Tonight, though, it's doing… well… the opposite. Her protagonists have been separated and now reunited, and the make-up sex is staggering. Has her pressing her lips together absently as she reads, and her thighs, too. Has her growing warm and damp and envious of these two fictional characters and their very healthy sexual appetites. Their very available sexual partners.

It has her tense, has her on edge. Has her flipping back a page and letting her hand slip down, down, underneath her pajama bottoms and into the lace of her panties, fingers circling her clit as she rereads. Her breath deepens, her tongue creeping out to wet her lips as fictional hands tug at dresses and rip at shirt buttons and tear away satin underthings (that's ridiculous, she thinks - fabric never tears as easily in real life as it does in these books, and she knows - Graham had tried a time or two).

Her leading man is on his knees, lapping between his lady's thighs and Regina lets the book fall away with a sigh, shutting her eyes and stilling her fingers.

She's lonely. Wishes she wasn't alone, for once. Misses Graham, and for a moment, she imagines the fingers massaging her clit, slipping down to gather a bit more wetness then sliding back up, are his, but all that leads to is the question of whether or not he's still sleeping with Emma Swan, if she's the one he's actually touching like that, and that's no good.

No good for her mood, or her heart.

Her fingers skim the edges of the book again, about to pick it back up and try to lose herself in Declan's pistoning hips, when another image flits across her mind. Other hands, strong, nimble. A jaw covered in soft stubble, and too-blue eyes.

Her heart stutters, her belly heats.

Robin.

Oh hell, why not? What's the harm in imagining, just for a night. Him, touching. Him, kissing. Him, between her thighs. Her fingers slip down again, and then in, two of them, working slowly but building speed. She imagines they're his, imagines his voice in her ear, that accent, telling her how wet she is, how hard he's going to make her come.

God.

She feels herself clench with anticipation, and moves faster.

**.::.**

Robin is close already, only a few minutes having passed, but they were a productive few minutes for him and Fantasy Regina. She'd come and come, is sweating and panting and crying out as she rides him. One hand fisted in her dark hair, the other curling nails into his shoulder as she ruts and ruts and comes again, babbling about how  _good_  he is, how  _big_  he is (it's his fantasy, after all).

And then he switches tracks, imagines her on her knees for him, his cock in her mouth, those wine-colored lips leaving streaks of lipstick behind as she sucks him off. Oh yes, that's it… that's it… He won't take much longer now, not with that brilliant image in his mind, her cheeks hollowing, her hand gripping, pumping, her tongue warm and wet and sliding against him.

 _Fuck_.

**.::.**

Regina adds a third finger and lets out a low moan, imagining it's him inside her now, deep, thrusting,  _oh_ , yes, that's… this is what she needs. Almost. With a little sound of frustration, she draws her fingers out, shimmying out of her bottoms and eyeing her unlocked door suspiciously for a moment.

She'll have to fix that. If Henry wandered in, they'd both be mortified beyond the telling of it.

She rises long enough to flip the lock on the door, and while she's up, tugs her top off as well, tossing it toward the end of her bed where she can grab it easily when she's done. For a moment, she eyes her nightstand curiously. Debating. Vibrator, or no vibrator? Henry's asleep, but  _how_  asleep? It's quiet, but if he gets up to go to the bathroom or get a cup of water, will he hear it? Will he wonder?

She could put on some music...

Yes, she'll do that. She reaches for her phone, docked in the alarm clock on her nightstand and turns on a quiet playlist, the volume low, just enough that the soft buzzing won't be heard. And then she grabs her vibrator, belly warm with anticipation as she turns it on, keeping the vibrations low, even with the music on. It's not the buzzing she needs anyway, it's the shaft.

She stretches out along the bed again, parting her thighs, settling her shoulders into the pillows and rubbing soft silicone over her clit and down, slicking it up with her own wetness and then letting it sink inside.

 _That's_  more like it.

**.::.**

Robin is right on the edge, his strokes snug and short, muscles tense, Regina's head bobbing and bobbing as she moans around him. And then suddenly, he stills, just for a moment. Gives himself a long, slow stroke and then another, one more. No need for this to end quite so soon. He moans roughly as his thumb passes over the tip of his cock – her tongue, he thinks. It would be a teasing lick to draw the whole thing out, make it last. He does it again, again, until his jaw is clenching, his breath heavy, and then he imagines her taking him back in again and sucking hard.

He pump, pumps, pumps, squeezes his eyes shut tight and sees her, naked and glorious and all for him, and as he imagines her taking him, sucking him in and in, deep, deep, he comes with a groan, wet warmth landing on his belly, coating his fingers as he slows his strokes.

His heart pounds, his breath still unsteady.

If only having her would be that simple.

**.::.**

Oh God, oh  _God_ , oh God…

It's a silent mantra in Regina's head as she fucks herself (it's Robin, Robin, Robin pounding into her, angled up just right, knocking against her g-spot with every thrust, his hands gripping under her knees, holding them up, open), quick and hard, the way she  _needs_  it tonight. Her thighs are starting to quiver and she parts them wider, splays herself open, arches her back just a little at the shift in angle, huffing out a breath before pressing her pillow into her face and moaning.

Oh, this is good, this was a good idea, the vibrator was a  _good_  idea.

She whimpers and bites her lip, and moves it faster, faster, her jaw dropping open as her free hand skates down, tweaks her nipples on the way, a good, hard tug that makes her hips lurch, and then she's rubbing her clit again, rocking into her own touch, teeth catching her lip. She imagines him telling her to come for him, to let go, that he wants to hear her scream (oh  _God_ , she wants to scream but can't, can't, she is not hidden away somewhere with him, she is home, it is after bedtime, oh  _God!_ ).

Her fingers are his, strumming her expertly he continues his pace into her, quick, hard, sweat blooming on her skin as she feels her orgasm building, building, so close, oh, so close, just a little more.

Orgasm hits her hard enough to make her squeak, a moan she cannot quite suppress strangling itself in her throat as her body shudders and shakes and tightens, her hands stilling before she goes boneless with a sigh that sounds suspiciously like  _Robin_.

Her thumb is clumsy as it finds the button to still her vibrator, and she lets out an indulgent little moan at the way her body still hums with fading pleasure.

Sleep will come easy now.

**.::.**

"Karaoke or open mic?" August asks out of the blue on Monday evening, while Robin is in between pours.

HIs brow furrows, and he tilts his head towards his employer. "What?"

"Business is lagging a bit on Sundays now that football is over," the other man explains. "So I'm debating. Karaoke, or open mic?"

"Open mic," Robin tells him firmly. "Karaoke is simply begging for an entire night of off-key 80's power ballads." He considers for a moment, and then adds, "Although I don't customarily work Sundays, and karaoke is a bit more accessible to your average run-of-the-mill patrons, so perhaps go with that after all." He smiles mischievously and says, "Let Ruby deal with it."

August chuckles, shaking his head and leaning against the bar. "Throwing your co-workers under the bus, huh? And the women, no less."

"Ruby can handle herself," Robin retorts, smiling himself.

"She's also talked about trying to swap out her Sundays for another weeknight," August tells him, and Robin's stomach sinks. He hopes the man isn't about to suggest what he thinks he is. "Any chance you're interested?"

"Sorry, mate," Robin shakes his head. "I've my son on the weekends, and as much as I could use the extra money, I won't give up so much as an hour with him for it."

"Fair enough," August agrees, nodding at one of the regulars as she walks in the door. "Any chance you're interested in Thursdays?"

Robin frowns, surprised at the offer. "To cover you or Ruby?"

"Her."

"On a Thursday? I thought she was only willing to give those up when they were, and I quote, 'pried from her cold, dead hands'?"

August chuckles. "Apparently she's 'missing out on all the good party nights' because she's busy pouring other people's shots instead of her own. Sacrifices have to be made for the sake of her social life."

"Oh, to be young again," Robin commiserates, before asking, "To pick up or trade? I've another gig on Thursdays." But they're far more lucrative than some of the earlier nights of the week, and the money would be helpful... "I could try to move it to another night, Friday maybe... But it would be cutting things close with picking up my son."

Maybe Regina wouldn't mind Roland tagging along. But then, she'd be stuck babysitting while he taught, and somehow he doesn't think that's how she wants to spend her Friday evenings.

"Trade," August tells him. "For Mondays, maybe? You'd have a longer weekend."

That could work, if he could get Regina to move Henry's lessons to the beginning of the week.

"Ruby won't mind swapping a Thursday for a Monday? Wasn't she trying to get rid of those when I got hired?"

"She was, until she realized that they're slow because nobody has plans - including her," August shrugs. "Apparently she feels like she's turning into a spinster."

"Ruby?" Robin questions with a lift of his brow. Ruby, who is young and fresh-faced, and outgoing, and always rakes in tips? Hardly. "If she's that hard up for slow nights, offer her Tuesdays."

"And lose that accent and those dimples on Ladies' Night?" August scoffs. "Not a chance. We'd make even less."

Robin feels his mouth quirk, the dimples in question no doubt winking before he can school his face back into something more serious. He's been in this job long enough now to know that it's as much about how you present yourself as how you pour the drinks, so he doesn't pay much mind to August making bartending choices based on aesthetics.

"If it's alright with her, I'll gladly trade," he tells August, who nods and turns his head to peruse the bottles along the wall, taking his usual periodic mental inventory of what might need replacing before the night is out.

"Make sure you can move your other thing," August says almost absently, scribbling a few notes onto a napkin and telling him, "I don't want to put you out." And then, "I'm going to run down to the cage for more Jameson and Absolut. Can you run those beers to table seven?"

Robin nods, murmurs, "Of course," and does just that, thinking for a moment that it doesn't much matter if Regina can accommodate Mondays or not. He's likely to up his pay by well more than fifty dollars by switching to Thursdays, and he needs to make choices that are best for himself, his family, not for... well, a pretty woman he should be spending less time with in the first place.

Of course, he's only just started working off that guitar she bought him - he'd have to pay her back for that straight away if he bailed on her. And Henry would be so disappointed.

It's a needless worry right now, he tells himself, forcing the what-ifs to the wayside. He'll talk to her, soon - tomorrow perhaps, so he can give August the all-clear as soon as possible - and it will either work out or it won't.

Tonight, he has his job to focus on.

**.::.**

She doesn't expect to see him until Thursday, and certainly not before noon on a weekday, so Regina can't really be faulted for staring at Robin a bit dumbfoundedly for half a moment when he appears on her doorstep Tuesday morning during breakfast. She's half-dressed - in slacks and only a thin camisole, and he's in just sweatpants and a hoodie, looking sleep-mussed and tired. Like he just rolled out of bed. His gaze skims down before snapping back up to her face suddenly, as if he'd caught himself checking her out and rushed to rectify it.

She thinks inexplicably of her fantasy from a few days ago, of them, very naked and very groiny, and she clears her throat and lifts a hand to flutter up near her collarbone, feeling momentarily modest (exposed, despite the fact he could have no idea what she's thinking of). It doesn't help that the morning air is chilly, has goosebumps flaring along her forearms, has her acutely aware of how thin her top is. She should get this over with as quickly as possible.

"Robin," she says needlessly, tilting her head and knitting her brows. "What are you doing here this time of day?"

"'M sorry," he shakes his head, his voice still gruff and raspy, as if these are the first words he's spoken all day. Maybe they are. "I wanted to catch you before Thursday - do you have a moment, or am I interrupting breakfast?"

Regina shakes her head, tells him it's fine, asks what's up.

"They're rearranging my schedule at work, giving me a better night," he tells her, and she smiles immediately, glad for him. When did she start to feel so possessive over his happiness, she wonders? When did she start to care?

"That's great," she says, but then she realizes he's standing on her porch in, essentially, his pajamas, wanting to talk to her about something sooner rather than later, and it clicks for her. Why he's here. Henry's going to be so disappointed. Her smile dims only slightly when she deduces, "You're working Thursdays." He nods, shoving his hands into his pockets and squinting apologetically at her. "And you'll make a lot more than fifty dollars pouring drinks."

"'S not about the money," he insists, and then he's frowning. "Well, I mean, it is, but - I'm not quitting, I'm just wondering if you'd mind switching to Mondays, that's all."

Oh. Is that all.

"Of course, that's fine," she assures him, before asking, "When do you start?"

"I'm not sure yet," he says with a jerk of his shoulders. "I told my boss I'd make sure this could be moved, and let him know."

Wait. No. He can't have - he didn't -

Regina frowns. "Robin, if it comes down to lessons with Henry or work, you choose work."

"Oh, I know," he insists, his hands shifting in his pockets, her own shifting to the door frame (she wonders briefly why they're still standing there, why she hasn't invited him in out of the cold). "I know that, and if you couldn't do Mondays, I'd have…" He lets out this little exhale, almost a sigh. "I'd have quit, I just wanted to make sure. I'd hate to disappoint Henry, and I still owe you for that guitar."

Regina waves a hand in dismissal and says, "You'd have paid me back eventually. But Mondays are fine. Just let me know when you need to make the switch."

"Mom!" Henry calls from inside, and she cranes her neck back, telling him she'll just be a minute.

When she turns back to Robin, he's smiling at her, and saying, "I should leave you to your morning." His gaze flicks down – doesn't linger, just gives her a quick sweep and it hits her then that there were easier ways to get in touch with her than showing up. He could have called, or texted, or…

"Robin?"

"Mm?"

"What time did you go to sleep?"

His brow furrows, mouth pursing slightly as he wonders, "Why do you ask?"

"You're here, in person - you could have called."

Regina watches his expression change, smoothing and then shifting into something a bit dumbfounded. Like it hadn't even occurred to him that there were easier ways.

And then he smiles, laughs softly and shakes his head at himself as he holds up his hands. "I went to bed 'round three, which is probably why getting up in the morning and coming here to ask you in person seemed like the only option. The addled thoughts of a sleep-deprived mind."

Regina huffs a little laugh, teasing, "Maybe your subconscious just wanted a good look at me in my underwear."

His teeth catch the bottom lip of a slow smile, and this time the once-over he gives her lingers for a moment longer. Still, it catches her off-guard when he says quietly, "It's certainly not a bad way to start the day."

The compliment has her stomach fluttering, and she fights the urge to duck her head. Instead, she keeps her gaze steady on his as she nods slowly, drumming her fingers on the door frame, and pressing her lips together to suppress a smile (that whole "flattery will get you nowhere" thing is a complete joke, she thinks - or at least, it's entirely untrue before nine in the morning).

Robin holds her gaze for just a few seconds more and then tells her, "I hope you have a good day, Regina," and "I'll see you Thursday."

"Yes," she replies, curling her fingers into a loose fist when she feels the urge to lift them to her hair and tuck it back. "Thursday."

He turns to leave, and she steps back into the house. And she does not, under any circumstances, linger a moment longer and watch him walk away.

**.::.**

Thursdays turn to Mondays, and they fall into a bit of a routine. Robin arrives five minutes before seven every week to find Henry ready to go, his notes from the previous week's lesson neatly spread on the coffee table. They review, and they troubleshoot, and then they move on to some fresh chord or technique, something new to master. Robin tries to have a new song picked out for each week, and they go over it once, and then again, again, again, until Henry can play it without too much hesitation. When he's feeling particularly savvy, the boy calls Regina in to watch, and she stands in the kitchen doorway and beams as Henry strums. If he's struggling, he insists he wants to practice more before he shows his mum.

When their hour is up, dinner is on the table, and Regina is waiting with a to-go portion for Robin. He knows why she does it, knows it's more charity or guilt than really wanting his opinions on her cooking, but frankly, her cooking is wonderful, and he looks forward to his Monday night takeout from Chez Mills more than he might like to admit. So every week he swaps an empty container for a full one and tries something new.

And so it goes for a month. It's not until the first week of May that anything changes, but change it does.

The night starts out normal enough, lessons as usual and then a few moments to appreciate how Henry's callouses are coming along nicely. The boy's proud of them, and rightfully so. Robin tells him they're a mark of progress, a symbol that he's becoming a true musician now, and Henry positively puffs up.

Then Robin heads for the kitchen as Henry carefully packs the guitars away. His stomach is near to growling at the scent that had built up during their lesson. Meat and tomatoes, something warm that feels like it belongs more to a winter's night than late spring, but she'll get no complaints from him.

"Whatever you're cooking smells amazing," he tells her as he crosses the threshold, and she turns from where she stands at the counter, preparing a salad it appears, with her navy blue striped apron tied over the work attire she still wears. Robin tries very hard not to admire the curve of her arse in those neatly tailored pinstripe pants.

"Thank you," she tells him with a smile, nodding her chin toward the table.

He expects to find his usual packed Tupperware of whatever heavenly concoction Regina has cooked up tonight, but tonight the small table is set for three, a golden, cheesy, bubbly tray of lasagna cooling in the center. Untouched.

Robin blinks at the third plate, frowning slightly, then looks to Regina, a question in his gaze.

"Stay for dinner," she invites, and for a moment her expression is open and soft, rimmed ever so slightly with nerves, like she thinks he'll refuse her.

He ought to, he thinks. Ought to take his obligatory Tupperware and go, let her feed him in payment and get on his way. He shouldn't linger with her, not now. Not when she's standing there all beautiful and enticing with her dark hair, and those dark eyes, and that mouth always painted those deep reds and winey burgundies. With the perfume that drives him to distraction, and the warm meals and pleasant conversation, the increasing lack of judgment for the things that he's done. But he  _has_  done them - the ones she knows of, and more on top of that, and he should go.

He likes her - oh, how he likes her - more perhaps than he's been allowing himself to admit. But it doesn't matter - can't matter - because no matter how many attractive qualities she has, she also has very wealthy parents from whom he absconded with several thousand dollars in valuables.

He kicks himself for the thousandth time for that one transgression that has ripped away so much of his happiness.

He shouldn't stay, he should go. He should stay away from her.

He probably shouldn't even be here one night a week, because it's what's gotten them here, to this place - her standing there trying not to look hopeful as she offers him a seat at her table, and him standing here desperately wanting to say yes, but knowing that he should say no.

Indecision keeps him motionless.

**.::.**

This was stupid, she thinks to herself, as she watches Robin stand and stare at her. And stare at her. Like she's invited him to take her hand in marriage and not just join them for dinner.

This was stupid, she shouldn't have done this. She should have just packed him a square of lasagna and sent him on his way, stuck to their usual routine. Lesson, leftovers, "Goodbye, Robin," "Thank you, Regina," "Same time next week."

She's changed the dynamic on them, and it's all wrong.

She's not sure  _why_ , not sure  _how_ , because she thought the way he smiled at her, the way his fingers sometimes brushed hers when he took the meal she'd packed for him, the way his gaze always lingered just a little bit over her face (her body when he thinks she's not paying attention, and even sometimes when he knows she is), had meant there was mutual interest there. That he enjoyed spending time with her, at least as friends if nothing more. But now he looks like he's trying to figure out the best way to let her down gently, and she feels foolish.

His sudden inhale feels overly loud in the kitchen, and then he's saying, "Of course, thank you," and giving her a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes but seems genuine enough.

That knot of nerves that had tightened in her belly releases, and Regina smiles back, and nods, then offers, "Wine?"

**.::.**

It's the very last thing he should be doing, accepting her invitation, accepting the drink she offers him. But he does it anyway, takes a seat at the table, next to the one with the tall glass of milk set for Henry, and sips at the very good wine she's poured for him.

It's a bad plan, a wrong move, but he cannot bring himself to do the right thing tonight.

Not tonight.

When it comes to Regina Mills, it seems he's in for a penny, in for a pound. And he has a feeling that first penny dropped ages ago.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Per request, I'm gonna go ahead and give this chapter trigger warnings for emotional abuse and disordered eating.

May is balmy. Not overly warm, at least not up through the middle of it, and Regina is glad for it. She likes summer, likes heat, but there will be plenty of time for that when June, July and August roll around. Right now, she's enjoying leaving the windows open and the air off, enjoying spending her Saturday with warm sunshine, and fresh air, and the lazy breeze of a fan.

And her ramping anxiety.

Tomorrow is Mother's Day, a day she looks forward to with equal measures of affection and dread. On the one hand, there's Henry, who always manages to come up with some sort of gift for her. A drawing, or a handmade construction-paper bookmark, a clutch of wildflowers from the park. Last year, he even made her breakfast in bed - slightly overdone toast with too much butter and a criminal amount of strawberry jam, a peeled and sectioned orange, and some laughably weak coffee. It might be the best breakfast she's ever had. So she looks forward to this day, for him, for her son.

He's spent the afternoon at Robin's - had been collected for some "top secret" Mother's Day planning with him and Roland, with promises to return in time for dinner. (She'd thought of inviting them, Robin and his son, but she knows he has to bring the boy back early this weekend, and she doesn't want to horn in on his time.) She's curious, to say the least, what he'll have prepared for her in the morning.

But being a mother isn't the only part of Mother's Day - there's also  _having_  a mother, and that is what is twisting her stomach in knots. Brunch tomorrow. With Mother. Mother, and Daddy, and Henry. Cora had said she didn't want any gifts, just to see her daughter (or more specifically, "my daughter who never seems to have time to come for a visit"), and a homemade meal. So they're off to her parents' place in the morning, where Regina will be cooking. She's been planning on eggs Benedict, something fussy enough to be a special occasion meal, but not  _too_  complicated. But now she's not sure. It's... rich. Caloric. Daddy loves it, and so does Henry (and truth be told so does she, and so does her Mother - she knows she does, she has  _seen_ Cora order it), but she's starting to wonder if making something so unhealthy would be open season for criticism. (Regina's preference for healthy meals doesn't come from nowhere, after all.)

Maybe eggs Florentine instead - something a little greener. Or she could swap the english muffins for portobello mushroom caps, make the whole thing lower carb. That's Mother's latest thing, she knows. Low carb…

Or she could stop worrying so much and just cook what she wants to. Pair it with a salad and some cut fruit instead of the fried potatoes she might make if her mother wasn't there.

She hates Mother's Day.

What did she do, she wonders sometimes, to deserve a mother who cannot resist the urge to needle and pick and criticize, when so many other children got mothers who praised and bolstered and encouraged? Was she some sort of tyrannical monarch in a past life? Someone who crushed lives and struck fear? Is being Cora Mills' daughter some sort of karmic retribution for a life poorly lived? Or is it just sheer bad luck?

Whatever it is, she's maudlin today. Anxious and blue, and feeling very… young. Somehow her mother has a way of always making her feel like the stupid girl she always used to tell Regina she was, and it burns her that after so long, so many years, so much success, she's sometimes powerless to stop those feelings when they swell up in her. But there they are, nothing she can do but breathe through them and remind herself what her therapist used to say. She is not a child anymore, she is not beholden to Cora, and she cannot allow her mother's poisoned view of the world to become her view, cannot allow Cora's hang-ups to become her own hang-ups (too late, she thinks miserably).

She wishes she had a distraction. Something to do, someone to talk to. She could call Kathryn, but that will be an hour and a half of forcing herself into pretending she truly cares about Kathryn's problems, and today she just doesn't. She could read, but, well, that's what she's been trying to do, and look where it's gotten her. Her gaze slides to the piano, and she thinks she might play, but as she stares at it, she is hit with the memory of Robin. (Why is that night so stuck in her mind, she wonders? Why that one instead of the myriad of others she's spent playing the piano in all these years?)

Maybe she'll invite him over after all. She's no good like this, all worked up and stressed - if it's just her and Henry, he'll give her that look he does when she's not quite hiding her neuroses well enough. And that will just make things worse. With Robin and Roland here, there will be a distraction – for her and for Henry – and she's better at keeping up a good face when there's proper company in the house – a lesson well learned from her childhood.

She glances at the clock – it's still early enough that they probably haven't thought about dinner yet.

Regina uncurls herself from her armchair, and heads for her shoes before she can change her mind.

**.::.**

Robin answers the door, and smiles, stepping into the gap and leaning against the jamb, so Regina cannot see past him to the boys in the living room who are carefully applying paint to their really-rather-impressive-if-Robin-says-so popsicle stick picture frames.

"You," he greets, "are not supposed to be here."

She smiles, but there's a tension to her, a tightness in her smile that he immediately wants to ease. (Not your problem, he tells himself. She's not yours to soothe.)

"I know," she tells him, and her voice at least sounds normal. At ease. "I just thought I'd drop by and see if you and Roland wanted to have dinner at our place tonight. Nothing fancy. I thought maybe baked barbeque chicken?"

"That sounds delicious," he says, adjusting his grip on the door slightly before admitting, "Unfortunately Roland has recently decided he won't eat anything red."

Regina's expression falls from polite invitation to derisive disbelief, one brow lifting. "He won't eat anything red," she repeats.

"Yes, I'm trying not to take it as a reaction to my weekly servings of pasta and sauce for dinner," he tells her teasingly, with a grimace of self-deprecation. It makes her laugh, that tension bleeding out of her as she chuckles and grins at him.

"Does he eat chicken nuggets?" Regina asks, and Robin can't help ribbing her back, the words of out his mouth immediately:  _Do you?_

She lifts a shoulder, drops it, and God, she really does have a beautiful smile, doesn't she? He likes her this way, the weekend Regina, with her jeans and her cotton tops and her flats, instead of stilettos and sharp button-downs and dresses. It feels a bit like peeking behind the curtain into a private world.

"Henry does," she concedes. "And so occasionally I do, yes."

"Well, then, I suppose we're in luck. As long as you don't serve them with ketchup, I think chicken nuggets will do just fine." That smile spreads again, although there's still something there underneath it, something he can't place. "Although if it's not too forward of me, can I put in a request for that barbequed chicken sometime in the near future?"

"I can make both," she offers, shifting her hands into her pockets, her shoulders lifting and falling as she does. "Chicken for us, nuggets for the kids."

Robin frowns, shaking his head, and telling her, "Don't be silly. I wouldn't want you to go to the trouble."

"It's no trouble," she assures. "And it'll give you guys some more time to finish up whatever top secret project you're working on over here. Come by in, say, an hour?"

"Regina, I mean it. Nuggets are fine."

She nods, but the glint in her eyes gives her away. She's not going to listen to him, but then, why would he expect her to?

"See you in an hour," she tells him, and then she turns tail and bounds down his porch with a bit of a spring in her step.

Robin just chuckles and lets the door swing shut, turning his attention back to the boys behind him. And a good thing, too, because Roland has managed to streak himself with paint up to the elbows.

**.::.**

She doesn't make the chicken after all. It's one of Henry's favorites, and it hadn't seemed fair to make it and gobble it all up in front of him. Even if she'd wanted to do chicken for three and nuggets just for Roland, she was out of luck. She'd only bought enough fresh for the two of them, and the extra pack of chicken she'd thought was in the freezer was, on second recollection, dinner last week. So nuggets it is, for all of them. Organic, antibiotic-free nuggets, but nuggets nonetheless. And fries to go with them, since she had a bag in the freezer. She almost makes a salad – a knee-jerk, there's almost always salad of some kind with dinner, especially when dinner is a little more on the unhealthy side. But if she has a picky eater, she doesn't want to waste her greens, so she washes a pint of blueberries instead, and cuts slices of cucumber and carrot, hoping orange is far enough from red to be edible. Meat, starch, fruit and vegetables. A perfectly rounded meal, if you ask her, and while she watches the last five minutes of that hour she'd given them tick down, she whips up a quick honey mustard for the one who won't touch ketchup or BBQ sauce.

They come trundling through the front door after an hour almost exactly (Regina calling out a reminder that shoes go off in the foyer), and if Robin is disappointed by lack of barbeque, he doesn't say anything.

They sit around the table, all four of them, and Roland takes a rare opportunity to regale her with tales of his weekend with Daddy – "We went to the park and I climbed wrong ways up the slide and almost fell right on my face but Daddy caught me and then I went down the right way and then I climbed up the steps and I did it again and then I made Daddy do it too but the slide is too big for him and Tuck can't get up the ladder so he couldn't slide either." – He's become quite the chatterbox in the few months they've known each other, all dimples and smiles and "Hi, Regina! Hi, Henry!" every time he sees so much as their house (she's heard him through the open window more than once).

"It sounds like you had quite an adventure," she tells him as he positively drowns a chicken nugget in honey mustard and stuffs it is his mouth, nodding.

"Yea'a'venture," he manages through his nugget, earning a mild scolding from his father about talking with his mouth full. It doesn't stop him from slurring his "Sorry" around half-chewed chicken.

"I bet we could get Tuck up and down the slide," Henry muses, and  _Oh, no, you don't_ , she warns, because he's at that age now – that age where boys start getting ideas about what is and is not possible. "Why not?"

"No," she repeats, and that's enough answer for her. Mom says no, and that's it. But she doesn't miss the way he shares a meaningful glance with Robin. One that has her repeating, " _No_."

"He's my dog," Robin points out, smirking insufferably, and she fights the urge to roll her eyes.

"Actually, he's John's," she corrects, "And he's-" she points a fry in Henry's direction, "my son. I'd like to delay the adolescent hijinks for a few years if I can manage it."

Robin pouts exaggeratedly and teases, "You're no fun, Miss Mills," Roland crossing his arms and parrotting,  _Yeah, no fun, Miss Mills_. Henry just grins.

"Well, someone has to be the responsible one," she retorts, entirely unruffled by their teasing. It's… nice, actually. She feels good. Better. Happier than she did when it was just her and the house and her neuroses. She's come to enjoy her time with Robin (and Roland, today), has come to enjoy having someone other than Henry to talk to on a regular basis, here, at home. Something domestic and not professional. Just… a friend. A very attractive friend, perhaps, and one who looks at her sometimes with so much warmth she wants to– no. Stop thinking like that, Regina. That's… well, that's...

"Spoilsport," he sighs dramatically, yanking her out of her thoughts. And then he slides a nugget through the puddle of ketchup on his plate and tells her, "These are good. Compliments to the chef."

She lifts a brow. "All I did was open and heat."

"And very well," he flirts - because yes, it's flirting, he's always flirting, she thinks. And he's good at it, makes her smile and shake her head. But then his expression shutters slightly, some of the levity bleeding out, and he looks away, down at the nugget he's about to pop into his mouth. It would be subtle if she wasn't watching him, but she is, so she catches it. It's not the first time she's noticed him withdraw in the middle of a flirtation.

What is it that has him pulling back? she wonders. Her? Him? Marian? She wishes (and not for the first time) that she could get him alone for a whole evening again, pick his brain, find out what makes him tick.

"They are pretty good," Henry agrees, munching on a fry that is perhaps not as well done as Regina would prefer. Who likes a limp fry, after all?

They're right, she supposes. Dinner has been delicious. A rare treat. It's kid food - something she only keeps on hand for the nights when Mary Margaret watches Henry here at home, but, well, Roland is four and Henry is ten and kid food seems fitting. And besides, it's food her mother would look down her nose at. Breaded, and full of carbs, and damnit, her mother is not in charge. Regina is in charge, and Regina is going to eat as many goddamn fries as she wants.

She grabs another, dips it into the well of ketchup on her plate and bites off nearly half of it just to prove she can.

When she looks up, Robin is smiling at her again, and she feels it in her chest. That smile goes smirky and he tells her, "You've a bit of ketchup on your lip, love."

She half expects him to reach across the table and wipe it away, but this isn't some silly rom com, it's real life, dinner with their kids, and so he doesn't, of course. She's left swiping her tongue across her lip to catch it.

He licks his lips in response, and she thinks of kissing him.

**.::.**

Robin needs to get out of here, but he cannot bring himself to leave.

It's the same thought he has every Monday night, at least once or twice, when their gazes lock and hold, or when her slacks fit just right, or when she laughs that way she does.

He should not be here, with her, it is too dangerous. Too tempting.

But here he is, here they are, clearing dinner plates as Roland bounces in his seat and asks if he can  _please, please, pretty please_  see Henry's video games. Regina pauses, planting a palm on the countertop and turning to face Robin, giving her hair a little toss and asking if she should put in a movie or something for the kids.

Thankfully, he has a good excuse tonight: "I've got to get him to back home," he tells her. "Mother's Day tomorrow and all."

Her face falls, suddenly and hard, her head turning down and toward the counter, her thumb digging in hard to scrape at nothing. "Don't remind me," she mutters darkly, and oh,  _that_  is what's been bothering her, he realizes. The impending presence of her mother.

Robin's hand falls to hers on impulse, covering it and curling fingers around her palm. "You look lovely tonight," he tells her softly, a complimentary vaccination against the woman he knows poisons her confidence. Sure enough, she lifts her head back up, meets his eyes with her own surprised and vulnerable. He shouldn't be doing this, but he cannot help himself, cannot stop himself from adding, "I like this color on you. The purple suits you."

"Thank you," she tells him not quite breathlessly, but quietly. Privately. Her hand twitches slightly under his.

"Daddy,  _please_ , can I play?" Roland begs again from the table, startling them both out of the moment, Robin pulling away from her and turning to his son.

"I'm sorry, m'boy," he tells him. "But it's time to get you home to Mum. Let's go get your things."

"Oh, man," he moans, a new expression of woe he seems to have picked up at daycare, one that makes Regina chuckle warmly from just behind Robin.

He should really be going.

They say their goodbyes then, and he tells her again how lovely dinner was, even if it was just heat-and-eat.

And then he leaves before he can fall even harder for her than he already has.

**.::.**

"Can I bring my guitar to show grandma and grandpa?" Henry asks just before they head out the door the next morning, on track to be a good fifteen minutes early to her parents' house, even with the few stops she needs to make on the way there.

Regina is torn. On the one hand, of course he should, he's learned a lot in the last few weeks and she's incredibly proud of him. But on the other... She imagines every ugly thing her mother might say. Every insult to the fact that he chose guitar instead of piano or violin or the oboe. Mother doesn't think terribly highly of the guitar, she knows that. And she wants to protect him, her sweet son, her baby boy. But his face...

He's grinning hopefully at her, that way that he does. His smile wide and adorable, his eyes bright. He must sense her hesitation, because he adds a convincing little, "Please?"

Regina rubs her thumb over the strap of her purse, and nods, telling herself that it's Mother's Day, and that maybe things will be good this time. Maybe Cora will be in a good mood instead of a cutting one.

"Of course you can, sweetheart," she tells him, and the guitar goes carefully into the back seat of her car.

**.::.**

Much to Regina's pleasant surprise, Cora  _is_  in a good mood today.

They arrive to smiles all around, and warm hugs, and the very first words out of her mother's mouth are how good it is to see her, and how beautiful the emerald green of her sleeveless blouse is. Regina could cry with relief.

Her father has flowers for her, a big bouquet of tulips and irises, even bigger than the roses she'd brought for Cora. She smiles sweetly at him and hugs him tightly, whispers, "Thank you, Daddy," when he wishes her a Happy Mother's Day.

Cora fusses over Henry, about how tall he's gotten since the last time she saw him - he's grown an inch in the last few months, easily. Regina had had to buy him new pants just this week when she'd made him try on his khakis and discovered he was starting to show some ankle. He needs a haircut, too, she had forgotten to book one, and her mother notices – she sees the moment where Cora rakes fingers lightly through Henry's hair and squints – but she doesn't say anything.

It's a Mother's Day miracle.

The food turns out great - she makes the Benedict, and her mother compliments the hollandaise. Henry pleads for seconds, and Regina is in such a good mood that she agrees, tells him she'll poach one more egg and toast one more muffin, but how about they split it?

Later, she'll try to figure out the moment it happened, the moment everything began to unravel, and she'll think maybe that was it. That half an egg after she'd already had two, or maybe it was when Daddy looked at Henry fondly and told him how he was looking more and more like his father these days.

Maybe it had been that, because that had been when Cora had made a soft noise of displeasure, a little scoff, and Regina had shot her a warning look. Cora hadn't liked Daniel, not one bit, and Regina wasn't stupid enough to pretend she didn't know why. Aside from the lack of family money, he'd had the truly distasteful habit (in Cora's eyes anyway) of standing up to her any time she started to needle Regina. Daddy mollifies her with compliments after the fact, but Daniel... he'd had more spine. Had more than once told Cora that she'd said just about enough, that he wouldn't just stand by and listen to her belittle her daughter.

Regina thinks - no, she knows - that all Cora's sympathy after Daniel's death had been false. She'd been glad to be rid of him.

So yes, it was probably that - it was probably Daddy bringing him up, Daddy reminding Mother that Regina had held onto a piece of Daniel even after he was gone, that the lack of a father was no reason to give up a child even if she was unmarried and just starting out in her career and would have to change all her plans... That was probably what had turned Cora from pleasant smiles and compliments to the shrewd look she'd given Regina as she'd carried the plate with her and Henry's second helping of eggs Benedict back to the table.

She's just sat down, has just broken the runny yolk with her fork and popped the first rich, scrumptious bite into her mouth when Mother comments almost absently, "Those pants look a little snug, dear."

Regina's heart drops into her shoes, the egg suddenly tasting thick and unpleasant on her tongue.

So much for a good day.

She swallows, and settles her fork down carefully, then picks it up again because  _no_ , she'd told Henry they'd split and they will, damnit.

"I am a perfectly healthy weight, Mother," she clips, feeling heat creep up the back of her neck. Please, no. Not today, not in front of Henry and Daddy, please just stop.

"I never said anything to the contrary," Cora dismisses in that way she does, that way that makes it sound like Regina is overreacting. Is she overreacting? "Just that you might think of buying the next size up - you're pooching a bit at the hips."

She shouldn't have worn these jeans. They're stretch denim, and she'd bought them a few months ago, before weekly dinners where she tries to impress a neighbor with every delicious meal she can think of. She hasn't worn them since the last wash, so they're still tight - she'd noticed they were snug when she pulled them on, but had chalked it up to a few minutes too long in the dryer, nothing a day of wear wouldn't fix. She should have changed right then, should have known better than to give her mother ammo. Should have worn a dress, maybe. At the very least, she should have worn a different top, something that wouldn't need to be tucked in. Something that would have hidden the way the dark denim cinches in around her hips.

Because Cora has caught her with her guard down, has caught her with her soft (apparently poochy) belly exposed, and she's far more vulnerable than she ought to be. Far more thrown by the sudden swing in mood than she would be if she hadn't had the rest of the morning to relax and drop her defenses. This is a game, and Cora's already started before Regina's even had a chance to suit up.

But she knows this, she knows the rules. Knows Cora will push and push until she gets what she wants, and Regina can either try to let it roll off, or take every blow until Cora is satisfied she's been thoroughly punished for whatever slight she hasn't even realized she committed. Having the nerve to be born, maybe, she thinks sometimes.

She opens her mouth to excuse that she left the pants in the dryer too long, but at the last minute says instead, "I think they look fine. And quite frankly, Mother, the fit of my clothes is none of your business."

It's the wrong thing to say if she wants Cora to back off, she knows that, but it's the right thing for  _herself_. She looks back to the plate she's supposed to be sharing with Henry, very deliberately portions herself another (slightly smaller) bite of Benedict, and lifts it to her mouth. Chews. Swallows. Her stomach is churning anxiously, and the food sticks in her throat for a second, she has to reach for her coffee and sip to force it down, but she will be damned if she will let Cora win this. Not today, this is her day, too.

"Oh honestly, dear, you're always so sensitive," Cora dismisses, waving her hand and then picking up her own coffee mug and sipping. Regina focuses on keeping her face blank, passive, her pulse thudding loudly in her ears.

Henry is sitting right next to her, watching her instead of eating, so she focuses on staying placid, on keeping her voice even.

"I'm not sensitive," she says evenly, "I just don't appreciate the criticism where there is nothing to criticise."

"I think you look beautiful," Daddy tells her with a smile, the predictable verbal salve to soothe Cora's bite.

Regina breathes in, "Thank you, Daddy," and out.

"Of course she's beautiful," Cora huffs. "But sweetheart, if you don't want me to comment on your ill-fitting clothes, then either shop better or eat better. Don't pretend your sulking is  _my_  fault."

"I am not–" She cuts herself off, grits her teeth. She is not sulking, this is not sulking, she is – mortified is what she is, sitting here and just taking this while her son and her father watch her get picked apart. And she wants to end it, wants to shift the attention somewhere else, so she mutters a terse, "Forget it," and forces another bite of the eggs Benedict. It tastes like glue; her stomach twists violently.

Cora makes this noise, this soft "hmm."

Henry has barely touched his half, and she won't have that, she will  _not_ have him end up like her, so she smiles at him, and lifts a hand to brush through his hair, urging kindly, "Sweetie, you should eat before it gets cold. Unless your eyes were bigger than your stomach?"

He shakes his head, sits forward suddenly, and cuts a huge, drippy bite. Good. That's good.

"'s really go'd, Mom," he tells her around his mouthful, and of course Cora is on him like a shot.

"Henry, I don't know what kind of a barn your mother is running, but we don't speak with our mouths full in this house."

His gaze flits to Regina, and she swears she sees guilt. It makes her blood boil, makes her fingers tremble with restrained anger, because she doesn't think it's guilt for bad manners, she knows that face. The sheepish one, the "oops" face, and this is not that. This goes deeper, this is about  _her_ , and he should never feel guilt on her behalf, not ever. He is not something Cora is allowed to twist and use, Henry is  _her son_ , Henry is off-limits.

"I can chastise my own son," she tells Cora, her voice low but clear. "And–"

"Clearly not, dear, or–"

"You jumped on him before I even had a chance!" Regina shoots back, and now she's done it – she's raised her voice, she's let her control slip first. Damnit.  _Damnit._

Cora huffs, and shakes her head and stands, feigns hurt as she says tartly, "I will not be yelled at around my own dinner table, and on Mother's Day of all days. I made one simple comment, one perfectly innocent..."

She keeps talking, but Regina tunes her out for a moment, tries to pretend her mother's voice is just a buzzing, a drone of bees, static, white noise. If she doesn't, she will absolutely blow her top.

"I need more coffee," she mutters, interrupting whatever her mother is saying and rising, grasping her mug so swiftly that it sloshes, hot against her fingers but not scalding. It's barely even half-empty, and she feels stupid, foolish – could she possibly have come up with a flimsier excuse?

Cora laughs. A disbelieving sort of laugh, settling into her chair again as Regina stalks to the coffee pot and needlessly tops off her mug.

"You've never been very good at taking criticism gracefully, dear," she tells her, with an air of bemused disappointment. "It's always been one of your flaws."

 _Add it to the list_ , Regina thinks darkly, biting her tongue enough to keep it in, but not quite able to do the same for her muttered, "You'd think after all the practice I've had, I'd be a pro."

"What was that, dear, I didn't catch it?"

"Nothing," Regina says as she turns, taking a deep breath, and declaring, "I think we should change the subject. It is, as you said, Mother's Day. And clearly this topic of conversation isn't... very festive."

"I'm not sure how we got onto it in the first place," Cora tells her, feigning bewilderment, and how does she  _do_ this? How does she act like she is not doing what she is doing? Like she didn't start all this? Like she is perfectly content all of a sudden, aside from her silly, overdramatic daughter?

The room goes quiet, and tense, the only sound the soft metallic scrape of Henry's fork against his plate as he takes the last bite of his brunch.

Well.

Isn't this just lovely.

It's her father that breaks first, but isn't it always? He always reaches to ease the tension, and today is no different.

"Henry, if you're done eating, I think it's about time you show us those new guitar skills," he urges, and Regina's stomach swoops so hard that for a moment she thinks she might be sick. For someone who has lived with Cora for decades, he somehow manages to step it in on a regular basis.

"Oh, I think that would be wonderful," Cora gushes with apparent sincerity, reaching over to give Henry's hand a little squeeze. Regina wants to rip her away from him, wants to take him home now, immediately, before he can find himself in her warpath.

But he's nodding, and saying, "Okay!" with all sorts of enthusiasm. "I just have to wash my hands."

He scrambles off his chair and toward the hall powder room, and Regina waits, waits until he is out of earshot before she looks hard at her mother and threatens, "If you say so much as one nasty thing to him about this, I will take my son and I will leave here and we will  _never_  come back."

Cora looks at her like she's grown a third head, and asks, "Regina, what kind of a monster do you think I am?"

"Oh, save it," Regina bites back. "You know exactly what you're doing, you always do–"

"I have no–"

"No!" Regina cuts her off. "Stop it, just–" She shakes her head, her fingers rising to fist in her hair as she scrunches her eyes shut. She is losing her cool, needs to rein it in, Mother does not respond to temper tantrums. "Just stop it. All of it." She opens her eyes again, looks at her mother. "The snide remarks and the denial and all of it. This is my day, too, and I do not have to sit here and listen to this just because you've decided to pick me apart for sport. Henry is going to come back in here, and then he's going to go play his guitar for you, and you are going to say nothing but complimentary things, and then we are leaving."

For a moment Cora simply looks at her, hard, cool, calculating. And then she says, "I think that would probably be best, dear. You've certainly managed to make this Mother's Day a… memorable one."

The implication is clear: Regina's rudeness has ruined her day. Even when she stands up to her mother, she still loses.

**.::.**

Twenty minutes later, Regina is hugging her father goodbye, Henry putting his guitar in the back seat just a few feet behind her. He'd loved showing off for his grandparents, and it had seemed like they both genuinely enjoyed watching him play. Her father had been nothing but complimentary, and even Cora had been kind. She hadn't said another word to Regina between their disagreement in the kitchen and their goodbyes, but she'd been good to Henry, and frankly, that's all that matters.

"I'm sorry today didn't go well," Daddy tells her quietly, rubbing his hand between her shoulder blades and holding on a bit longer than usual. Regina feels tears prick at her eyes (she wants to get  _out_  of here, wants to go home and draw herself a hot bath and have a good cry), and squeezes her father a little more tightly, murmuring that it's not his fault. She feels him sigh, and then he lets her go, cups her cheek with a sad sort of smile and says, "It was really good to see you, sweetheart. You should come around more often."

Regina's brow furrows. He can't be serious.

"Daddy, you've seen the way she treats me," she tells him. "Why would I want to be here  _more_  often?"

Henry Sr. shakes his head and rubs his palms over her biceps, tries to reason, "She only gets like this when it's been a long while since we've seen you. Maybe if you came by every few weeks – dinner once a month, maybe? She might be… easier."

For a second, Regina wonders if maybe he's right. Maybe she should spend more time with her parents, maybe if she did things would be easier. But just the thought has a headache beginning to throb at the base of her skull (or maybe that's all the anxiety and tension finally getting to her).

"I can't think about that right now, not after today," she tells him, because she really, really can't. But the look of disappointment he tries to hide guts her, and it occurs to her that maybe he's only asking because he misses her. Because keeping away from Cora has often meant keeping away from him, and she knows he misses her as much as – maybe even more than – she misses him. So she offers, "But maybe you and I could get lunch sometime soon? Just the two of us."

His whole face changes, a smile spreading, his eyes lighting. He nods at her and says, "I'd love that, sweetheart. And you really do look beautiful today. Don't listen to your mother."

"I never do," Regina lies, stealing one last quick hug before heading for the car.

When they get home, Henry asks if he can go to the park with a friend, and she sends him gladly, grateful for the quiet. When he's gone, she climbs the stairs to her room, strips out of those stupid jeans and hurls them into the bottom of her closet with a vicious grunt.

They can stay there for the next month for all she cares.

**.::.**

On Monday night, she runs. Ordinarily, she'd be cooking, but Henry had asked for pizza, had begged and pleaded in fact, and so she'd asked Robin his topping preferences (which had amounted to basically anything that had once had a pulse) and called in the order. Which meant no cooking, which meant nothing to do – not that there was  _nothing_ to do, there is always something to do, but it had felt like nothing. She'd done laundry yesterday afternoon, had wiped down the bathrooms just on Saturday, and there's no point in cleaning the kitchen if they're about to eat in it.

So running had seemed a way to pass the time.

And, after all, she was pooching a bit at the hips.

So on Monday night, she runs. She slips into running shorts and a tank top, grabs a pair of jeans for later and a thin red hoodie and takes it all into the office, closing the door behind her and pulling up Rihanna on her iPhone. She plugs in her headphones, steps onto the belt of the treadmill, and by the end of "S&M" she's running at full-tilt.

She doesn't stop until the clock turns from 7:54 to 7:55, and by then she's sweat-slicked and warm, panting, thirsty, a little wobbly in the knees as she punches the intensity down a few levels and slows to a brisk walk. Two minutes later, she's slipping off her shorts in favor of soft denim, zipping her hoodie up to cover the damp splotches of sweat that darken parts of her top.

When she opens the office door, the boys are already in the kitchen, and the smell of pepperoni and sausage assaults her nose, makes her stomach pinch painfully with hunger.

She should have told Henry no, she thinks. She can't eat that, not tonight, not for a while, not until she fits in those jeans properly again. She should've saved the chicken for tonight, split it between the three of them, or given it all to Henry and Robin and just made a bigger salad for herself. Stupid. (She needs to stop thinking like this. This is not healthy. Tomorrow, she will make pancakes for breakfast, or maybe cheesy scrambled eggs. Tomorrow.)

When she steps into the kitchen, though, her son grins up at her from the table, his teeth clamped tightly into a greasy, cheesy, meaty slice, and she can't help smiling back at him.

"She emerges," Robin announces with a smirk, pulling a slice for himself from the box - they must have just started, there are only the two pieces missing. Unless they've been into the second box - a small veggie supreme, light on the cheese, her answer to their Meat Lovers - but somehow she doubts it. "We didn't want to disturb you before you finished."

"I appreciate it," Regina tells him, opening a cabinet and pulling down a cup, filling it with cool water and chugging.

"The salad on a slice for you, I assume?" he asks, shifting the boxes, flipping open the top of the smaller one.

Regina shakes her head, lowering her cup and telling him, "Not yet. Need to hydrate first, and it'll just get cold."

With a nod, he lets the lid fall again, settling into one of the open seats.

Regina takes another glug of water.

**.::.**

Robin and Henry are both two slices down and reaching for a third (Regina offering her son a warning reminder of how bad he felt the  _last_  time he overstuffed himself with pizza) when it occurs to Robin that Regina has yet to move from her place at the counter. She's refilled her water, and is sipping at it slowly, but she hasn't bothered to sit, or to eat.

She's just watching, her face unreadable, eyes a bit on the stormy side. She smiles at all the right times, and contributes to the conversation from time to time, but she seems… drawn. Distracted.

Henry must be thinking the same things he is, because he urges, "Mom, come have some pizza!"

She stiffens at that, her brow pinching as she says, "Oh… I think I may save mine for later, sweetie. I drank a little too much water. My stomach's full."

No, it's not. Water does not fill one up, not two measly cups of it anyway. And her poker face is terribly poor today, slipping as she speaks, as she presses her lips into a line and looks down at the kitchen floor for a moment. Her arms are crossed over her chest, as they've been the whole time she's been standing there, one hand gripping her cup, the other tightening against her sleeve just enough for him to notice.

For a moment she looks terribly vulnerable - young, he thinks.

Her mother. That's what all this is about, he realizes. The running, and the not eating, and the trying very hard not to look like someone's kicked her in the gut. He thinks of her counting cookies, thinks of her biting into fries like they were enemies two nights before, taking them out one by one. Of the entire generous portion of barbequed chicken she'd run by his house last night, telling him she'd made too much for just the two of them, and he'd said he wanted some so… He's suddenly quite certain he ate her dinner last night.

"Are you sure you're not hungry?" Robin asks her, trying to keep his tone casual but kind, all the while his insides are twisting. She's been dealt some sort of body blow, and is keeping it all bottled up, starving it out, and he aches to help her.

"No, I, um – I had a big lunch. Business meeting. I'm still pretty stuffed."

She's lying. Doing it well, but somehow at the same time incredibly poorly. Practiced, he thinks. But stumbling. Her gaze flicks between them, and then she's ducking her face into the wide plastic cup for another long sip, but he thinks perhaps she's hiding more than slaking her thirst.

Robin spares a glance for Henry, and he's looking at his mother just as boldly as Robin imagines that he himself is. Like he knows just what she's doing, like he wants to say something.

And then suddenly Regina is exhaling heavily and setting her cup on the countertop, and saying quickly, "You know, on second thought, it does smell pretty good."

When she turns back to them, she looks calmer, more collected, and she closes the distance between counter and table quickly, scraping out a chair and flipping open the box of veggie pizza, lifting a piece as she sits and taking a needlessly large bite of it.

Henry relaxes visibly.

Robin does not. He keeps up appearances just fine, he thinks (he hopes), but he watches her all through dinner. She talks to Henry, gets him going on the list of songs he's been making that he wants Robin to teach him, something to engage the both of them while she picks peppers and onions and mushrooms off the top of her pizza and eats them one by one. She takes perhaps four small bites of the cheese and crust, maybe five.

It's none of Robin's business, how she eats. He knows that, he knows she's not his business, that she  _should_ not be his business, that she  _cannot_  be. But he can't deny he cares about her, and so he's almost glad when she declares Henry finished with dinner, and sends him off to do his nightly reading, even letting him take a fudge pop up to his room for dessert.

Robin thinks perhaps she's just tired of acting like she's actually going to eat a proper meal, and sure enough, the pizza hits the plate the moment Henry's socked feet hit the stairs.

For a moment, they just sit in silence. Regina scratches the nail of her index finger along the very edge of her crust, picking at a bit of browned cheese stuck there. Robin watches.

Finally, he tells her quietly (because this feels like a quiet sort of conversation), "You shouldn't feel guilty about pizza."

Her answer is immediate and clipped, "I don't know what you're talking about."

Robin blows out a sigh, and tells her, "I'd say the only one you're fooling is Henry, but I'm pretty sure he's caught on." He thinks he sees a tremble in her chin for the briefest of seconds before she chews on the inside of her lower lip and lifts her gaze to the painting on the wall opposite them, staring at it like a bowl of red apples popping against a black and white background is suddenly incredibly interesting. "Regina, is everything alright?"

"Yeah," she tells him, grabbing her pizza again, lifting it, but only so much that the end still touches the plate. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"Henry mentioned he showed off his guitar to his grandparents yesterday," Robin says to her, shifting a little in his chair until he's facing her more fully. "And I haven't forgotten what you said about your mother that day I helped you with the groceries. Did she say something to you? You look awfully conflicted about that pizza."

It hits the plate again, and she takes a slow breath in, a slow breath out. Then she looks at him, and the pain he sees in her dark eyes is staggering.

"I should have known better than to wear my skinny jeans."

Robin exhales, reaching for the back of her chair because he cannot reach for her. He curls his hand around the edge, his thumb against the warmth of her shoulder. "Regina…"

"Mother had some… things to say. About how they fit."

"If those things were anything other than 'incredibly well,' she was lying to you," he tells her softly. "And I should know, I saw them on you."

She shakes her head, her voice low when she admits, "I changed when we got home," and it lances right to his heart. Her words, and the look on her face. The one she's been trying to hide all night. Like she's taken a good punch right to the belly, and had the wind knocked out of her.

He tries again, "You forget I've seen you in leggings and a bra. It was quite the attractive sight. Nothing for anyone to nitpick."

Her laugh is humorless, her gaze shifting back to the table, back to her plate. "That was months ago. I have gained a few pounds since then."

Robin wants to retort something along the lines of  _What? Two?_  but it doesn't seem the right tone for the moment, so he tells her plainly, "If you have, you can't see them."

"She did."

"She's looking too hard."

Regina turns her head to look at him again, and he watches her suck in a shaky breath, her eyes welling with tears as she confesses, "I had a really horrible Mother's Day."

And that's the end of his ability to keep his hands off her, to keep any sort of distance. Her wet lashes, and that wobble in her voice, and the way she blinks and sends twin tears careening down her cheeks. He scoots his chair even closer to hers, shifts his hand from smooth wood to her soft shoulder and urges, "Come here."

He draws her against him, and she comes willingly, sinking her shoulder against his chest, her head against his shoulder. Robin presses his nose into her hair, breathes in the phantom scent of her shampoo. Her shoulders shake, breath shuddering in and out of her, and she loops an arm around his belly, grips at his t-shirt.

Robin wants to punch something (someone, maybe) on her behalf. Wants to do something, anything, to ease her pain, but all he can do is assure her, "She's wrong. I don't know why she says those things to you, but she's wrong. You're beautiful. Don't starve yourself on her account. Eat some bloody pizza."

"I'm not starving myself," she insists quietly, sniffling and wiping at her cheeks. Her voice is wet, but not tight, and she takes a deep, steadying breath and unclenches the hand clutching his shirt before she continues. "I just don't want pizza right now. Especially not  _that_  pizza. It's all grease; it's disgusting." She sits then, brushing away what seems to be the last of her tears. "My comfort foods are not... most people's. But it's what Henry wanted. He asked for it, he's…" She shakes her head, tears surfacing again, but not falling. "He's figuring it out. He's getting older, and he's seeing things he never used to. Things I never wanted him to see." He still has his arm around her shoulders, reaches for her hand with the other as she tells him quietly, "I never wanted him to learn this. What she can do to me."

"He's a smart boy. And he loves you." She nods, she knows, but it doesn't seem to ease the burden any. She still looks positively miserable. She hazards a glance at him, something a bit unsure, and when he gives her shoulder a little squeeze because he doesn't know what exactly it is that look is supposed to mean, she seems to take it as permission to lean into him again. Fine by him. Robin lets her settle against his shoulder again, presses his chin against her brow. The silence that lingers now is far less tense than their last one, a bit more weary. It's he who breaks it again, because all this coddling has done nothing to actually fill her belly: "You don't want pizza?" he asks needlessly, and she shakes her head as expected. "What do you want?"

Her shoulder grinds into him lightly as she shrugs. He's not thrilled with her choice when she tells him, "Salad."

"You just had a hard run, babe," he reminds, urging, "You need protein. Why don't I make you some eggs?"

"You don't have to do that," she dismisses wearily, one hand falling to his thigh to push herself back up until she's more in her own chair than his. "I can cook for myself."

"I don't mind," he assures, because while she certainly  _can_  cook for herself, that doesn't mean she should have to. She's spent the last twenty-four hours and change hearing her mother's poisonous words in her head. Going about her day, mothering and working and what all regardless of her own crushed heart, and he wants to do something for her, wants to ease her load even if all he can do is offer her a meal she doesn't have to throw together herself. So he tells her, "You go change, I'll get this cleaned up and make you some dinner."

The look she gives him is half gratitude, half skepticism. "You sure?"

"Of course."

She needs no more encouragement to leave, sliding off the other side of her chair and rising to her feet, her trainers quiet against the hardwood as she retreats. Once she's gone, Robin lets the sympathetic anger burn through him. Anger he has no right to feel for her, but feels nonetheless.

All he can think is that he should have taken more. That night, all those months ago, when he robbed her mother of a few precious gems, he should have taken more. Should have cleaned that awful woman out of every sodding bauble she owned, stripped her riches down to nothing. She didn't deserve a single bloody piece of it.

**.::.**

He's already got the eggs stirred and the pan warming, has just started running a knife through a big red pepper he'd found in her crisper when Henry startles him so much he nearly slices through his own finger.

"Why are you cooking?" the boy asks - Robin hadn't heard him come down, had been too absorbed in figuring out how he could pack as many calories as possible onto a plate for her, in such a way that she'll not look at it like it's going to bite her back somehow when she sees it.

After he recovers from his surprise, and thanks his stars that knife hadn't slipped a millimeter closer, he tells Henry, "Your mum wasn't feeling much like pizza. I told her I'd whip up something else – cook for  _her_  for a change." Henry walks up next to him, and Robin can see the boy's head bobbing as he nods. He shifts the handle of the knife toward him, and offers, "Would you like to help?"

Henry takes it wordlessly, starts to slice carefully through crisp red flesh, and Robin pats him lightly on the shoulder as he steps away to grab an avocado from a bowl across the kitchen. They'll set her right with a proper plate of healthy food, he and Henry.

"Did I make it worse?"

It's a quiet question, one that makes Robin pause for just a second as he's reaching for a second knife from the block on the countertop. The boy sounds guilty, and Robin knows it would cut Regina to pieces inside to know it.

"No," he tells him. "She just… your mum, she…" Robin sighs softly, unsure of what to say. While he tries to gather the right thoughts, he runs his knife through the flesh of the avocado, splitting it in half around the pit.

"She's sad," Henry says, and yes, that she is. He sounds even sadder when he tells Robin, "Grandma was really mean to her. I think I might have made it worse. I talked with food in my mouth, and grandma got mad, and then mom got mad at  _her_ , and–"

Robin can't abide another word, cannot let this innocent child stew over the no doubt irrational behavior of a mad woman, so he sets the avocado aside, and interrupts, urging Henry to put the knife down for a moment. When he does, Robin reaches for him, grasps him by the shoulders and turns them face to face, then crouches down until he's eye to eye with the boy, meets his gaze steady on because this is important.

"Henry," he begins. "I want you to listen to me." Henry nods, so he continues, "Nothing your grandmother says is your fault, or your mum's. You're right. She was mean, she was cruel, and she hurt your mother very deeply, but that's not your fault. And I know for a fact your mother would not put an ounce of blame on you for what her mother does or says. So you go on and put that thought right out of your head. Alright?"

The boy's mouth puckers into a scowl so very like his mother's, but then he nods and takes a deep breath, and says, "Okay. I'll try."

"Good." He gives Henry's shoulders a squeeze and lets him go, asking, "How much pepper can your mum eat? Should we give her the whole thing?"

Henry nods, says, "Yep. Fill the plate."

"My thoughts exactly," Robin smirks, shifting the plate he'd already pulled from the cupboard toward the boy.

"I hate grandma," Henry declares as he plops the pepper he's already cut onto the plate and goes back to finish the rest.

"So do I," Robin mutters, glancing over just in time to catch a look of approval from Henry.

"She's mean like that a lot, and it makes Mom really upset," he explains. "Really, really upset. And then she gets quiet, and she's extra nice to me, and she either makes all sorts of food, or she makes nothing but salad all week. Or she makes  _me_  all sorts of food, and then never eats it. I thought she'd eat the pizza. But… it looked like it just made her… mad?"

"She wasn't mad," Robin assures him, laying avocado slices on the plate next to the pepper strips Henry keeps piling on. "She just… I don't know your mum all that well, Henry–"

"Sure, you do," Henry says, finishing off the last of the pepper carefully and then wiping all the seeds and extra inside bits into his hand, heading for the trash.

It throws Robin for a moment - that casual insistence that he's familiar to Regina. That her son would think he knows her well. Does he, he wonders? Perhaps he does. He certainly knows her better than he had just yesterday, understands her a bit more, he thinks.

Regardless, "But I think that when she gets upset like that, and you're worried - because I can see you're worried, and so could she - maybe instead of asking for your favorites, knowing she'll get them for you, you could try asking for hers. It doesn't have to be salads, you know, just… whatever else she likes. Maybe she likes spicy chicken, or fish and veg, or…" He jerks his thumb toward the bowl on the countertop, "Scrambled eggs. Your grandmother makes her feel uncomfortable, yeah?" Henry nods, listening intently now. "So what we need to do – what you should try to do if you see she's upset – is help her to be comfortable. Does that makes sense?"

"Yeah," he says, with dawning comprehension. Like he hadn't thought of it quite that way before, and well, who would expect him to? The boy's just ten. He looks satisfied, then, at ease, and he gives Robin a knowing little smirk before asking, "You really like my mom, don't you?"

Far, far too much, Robin thinks, but he's not going to be readily divulging that, and certainly not to her child. He goes for politeness instead (and perhaps a bit of avoidance, ducking in the fridge now that he's finished with the avocado, pulling out a packet of berries to rinse), telling Henry, "She's a wonderful lady. Quite a good cook, and smart, and a great mum. She's been very kind to me, and generous. Tough when she's had need of it. I care for her quite a bit, and I'd like to see her happy, and well taken care of."

"Are you going to kiss her?"

Robin's glad he's not holding a knife this time. He'd probably need stitches.

He laughs, a bit awkwardly, perhaps, and tells the boy, "No, I'm not. That's not… That's not what I meant." His gaze stays on the stream of the faucet the whole time, giving the berries a little shake in their plastic carton. "I didn't mean  _I_  wanted to… take care of her."

"But you are," Henry points out.

The boy has him there. But he refuses to feel guilt about this particular act. She's not his to comfort, he knows, but he'll not stand idly by while she suffers silently. He'll make her a plate of eggs when there's no one else there to do it. It's the decent thing, the right thing. (He's not sure if he's just making excuses now, but he knows he cannot leave this place tonight until she's had her wounds tended to just a little bit. There's no harm in a plate of eggs.)

"Tonight, yes, I suppose, I am," he concedes. "But as a friend, nothing more."

Still, the boy is persistent. "You should kiss her."

"I don't think your mother wants me to kiss her, Henry."

"I do," Henry tells him plainly. And then, "Just try it."

Oh, surely that would go over swimmingly. Just what she needs, for him to plant one on her when she's vulnerable and upset.

"Even if I was… going to… do that…" Robin begins carefully, "Tonight would not be the night for such things. Your mum needs someone to be a friend, and to listen. That's all. Now why don't you run along back upstairs – I know you've not done a whole half hour of reading yet."

He knows Henry's sniffing around in things that aren't his business, more like. And he's bound to get one or all of them in trouble with it. The last thing he needs is her son trying to play matchmaker.

"Fine," Henry sighs, in the way only young boys beleaguered by the prospect of more schoolwork can manage. "You'll take care of her, though?"

"Tonight I will," Robin assures, grabbing the bowl of eggs and giving it a stir. He doesn't imagine she'll be much longer now - he's time to cook them and have them still hot when she emerges. "You've my word on that."

"Cool. G'night, Robin."

"Goodnight."

Henry heads for the hall, but stops abruptly, turning back toward him. "Oh and – put some salsa in her eggs. She likes salsa in her eggs."

Robin is poised just over the pan, eggs already beginning to pour. Not too late, though, to add a bit of flavor.

"Got it," he notes. "Salsa in the eggs." He gives them a little stir in the pan, then heads for the fridge, and the half-empty jar of salsa he'd seen in the door. "Now go on, before she catches you shirking your schoolwork."

Henry grins, and nods, disappearing just as Robin grabs the salsa.

**.::.**

There's no use changing into clean clothes with a dirty body, so Regina takes a quick shower, just a rinse and swipe of a body bar, a good rinse of her hair in lieu of a real shampoo, and then she tugs on thin cotton pajama pants, dove grey and incredibly soft. She tops it with a yoga bra and camisole and a thin long-sleeve, then heads back to the kitchen to find the pizza packed away, the table clean except for a single plate already waiting for her.

Her breath catches, and her eyes nearly well again. He's made her eggs. Scrambled eggs, and avocado slices, and what looks like an entire red bell pepper cut into strips, nestled next to a pile of blackberries. There's toast on the way, too. She can smell it browning. Regina exhales heavily, relief and gratitude, loud enough to get his attention, to have him turning from where he's just settled her kettle on the stove and flipped a burner on.

"How'd I do?" he asks, reaching forward and tugging her chair out as she pads her way to him, tucking her damp hair behind her ear.

"Good," she tells him. "Really, really good. This looks excellent." She thanks him, folding herself onto the chair, one ankle tucked up under the opposite knee as she reaches for her fork. Her stomach is positively growling now, and the first bite of egg is heaven. They're a little spicy and flecked with bits of red - he must've dumped a decent helping of salsa into them, something she has a habit of doing on Sunday mornings with Henry.

"You want tea?" he asks, and she nods and  _Mmhmm_ s, her mouth busy with a second bite already, a bit of avocado speared up onto the fork with this one.

"There're boxes in the cabinet with the coffee," she tells him, and he goes dutifully.

"Cup of Calm, Nighty Night or Peppermint?" he asks, and she quickly crunches her way through a spear of pepper in order to answer. God, she's  _starving_  now that there's proper food in front of her.

"Calm," she requests, because Lord knows she could use some relaxation. She has no idea if the tea actually helps, or if she just likes to think it does, but she'll take the placebo effect gladly. She'll also take more of this avocado…

By the time he's set two mugs on the counter, a tea bag ready and waiting in each, she's cleared half her eggs and avocado, made a good dent in the peppers. She's saving the blackberries for dessert. He takes the chair beside her, and catches sight of her rapidly emptying plate as he sets the fresh toast and butter in front of it, smiling his satisfaction.

"Better?" he asks her, and she nods, because yes, she does feel better. Showered and in her pajamas, and fed. And heard. It all helps; he's helped.

"Good," he says, and then he looks at her with not a drop of pity but plenty of sympathy. "I'm sorry your mother is so awful to you."

Regina huffs out a bitter chuckle, and explains, "It's how she expresses her displeasure at my absence. The less I visit, the worse she is. But of course, the worse she is, the less I want to visit. Her behavior is my fault." He stiffens at that, straightens and sucks in a breath to protest, no doubt, so she rushes to assures him, "I know it's not. It's all a manipulation. And I know that, but…" She trails off, shakes her head, pushes the last few bites of egg around on her plate, suddenly feeling markedly less hungry.

"It still hurts," Robin finishes for her.

"Deeply."

The kettle starts to whistle, and Robin rises immediately, with a soft touch to her shoulder, and mild, "Finish your eggs."

Right. She scoops up another forkful and slides it into her mouth. Has just started munching another piece of pepper when he asks, "What about your father?"

When her mouth is clear again, she hums a little and says carefully, "My father is... a good man. But not a very strong one. He apologizes for her, but he's never been able to do much to stop her." She lifts another pepper slice and twists in her chair to watch him watch their mugs of tea. Waiting. Steeping. "Mother has a very… strong… personality. She's a steamroller."

He gives a rather undignified snort, and tells her, "If someone talked to my son the way your mother does you, I'd flatten them. They'd pick them up in pieces."

He would, she thinks. He may have struggled to fight Marian for Roland a while back, but she doesn't think he'd stand idly by and watch his child suffer. He'd come out swinging - maybe not literally, but… he'd take care of business, Robin Locksley. She doesn't doubt that.

"Well," she tells him a bit primly, gathering the last of her eggs and avocado. "You're a good father, then, I suppose. Maybe one who should get his violent tendencies seen to, but…" She twists around again to smirk at him, and he smiles back. One of the good ones that makes her belly ripple.

"They come in handy now and then," he jokes, then changes his tactic and amends, "Metaphorical flattening, then. And metaphorical pieces. I'd tear them a new one, that's for certain, though."

"I've no doubt," she says, finally taking that last bite.

He brings their tea back to the table not long after, when all she has left is berries and a little bit of red pepper, her untouched toast. She's slowing down, filling up. And he must notice, must approve, because he reaches over to steal a berry, then asks if she's going to have her toast.

Regina shakes her head, blows out a breath. "Avocado is filling," she tells him, and it is, and so are eggs, and now that it's down the hatch she's almost certain that was an entire bell pepper on the plate. She's had plenty, a full meal.

"Good," he says, nabbing the toast, sliding it over in front of him and slathering it with butter even though it's room temperature by now and the butter won't really melt.

"This isn't typical," she tells him, because suddenly she feels the need to. She wants him to know she's not… damaged. Not… a mess. "The not eating. It's not the norm. You see me every week – I love food. Sometimes she just… gets to me."

He nods, chews his toast and swallows, then offers (or maybe it's more of an order?), "Next time she spins your head around, you call me. I'll make you dinner, pay you compliments. Tell you how much of a manipulative bitch she is."

That last sentiment has her smile spreading. "Yeah?"

"Mmhmm," he hums, mid-chew again, finishing his bite and adding, "You deserve better."

Regina reaches over with her free hand and settles it on his, her other looped around the handle of her mug. The ceramic is warm against her fingers.

They finish their tea, and her blackberries, fingers linked all the while.

When her plate is empty, and the dishes are cleared, the mugs in the sink, he heads home.

**.::.**

Robin occupies her mind after that night. Takes up space, wanders in and out when she should be doing other things. Things like work. Things like grocery shopping. Things like thinking of anything other than him, other than the dream she'd had last night, just the two of them, sitting around her kitchen table, eating that barbequed chicken she'd made him over the weekend.

She's thinking of his mouth. She absolutely, positively should not be, but she is thinking of his mouth. Of the moment in said dream where she'd looked up just in time to catch him sucking a bit of sauce from his thumb, and it had… done things to her. Made her thighs clench and her breath catch - a sudden image of him with his face between her legs, sucking at something entirely different, had had her looking away with cheeks she hoped weren't as suddenly pink as they were suddenly hot.

She'd taken another bite of her own drumstick, a huge one, nothing dainty about it - enough food to keep her silent for a few minutes lest she say something stupid and embarrassing in her sudden lust-induced haze.

She really needs to have sex with someone.

Not him.

Maybe him?

No.

Not Robin, not her neighbor, not her son's guitar teacher, that would be… Well... That would be just fine, wouldn't it? They're unattached adults, they could… attach. But she doesn't want that, doesn't want just sex, just something empty and physical, as attractive as it may be. She wants more. She wants to know him. Wants to see more of the man who had made himself at home in her kitchen just to ease a few hurts he'd had no part in causing.

The realization hits her hard.

She wants to  _date_  him.

This man who showed up in her life, drunk and unemployed and with his life a complete mess… she wants to date him.

Mother would hate it.

All the more reason, she supposes.

But he's more than that. More than she thought. He's caring, and he's patient, and he's smart, even if he doesn't always show it. A bit rough around the edges maybe, but perhaps that would be good for her. Letting someone rough her up a bit, keep her on her toes.

He makes her smile.

Henry likes him.

And she's pretty certain the feelings are mutual - the attraction, the affection. If the fact that he was not turned off in the slightest by her crying on his shoulder wasn't enough of a clue, she's seen him looking at her. Hasn't missed the way his gaze skims her curves when he thinks she won't notice, the way he watches her mouth when she talks, his own lips pressing together, or parting to make space for the swipe of his tongue.

She wants that tongue.

God, she needs to snap out of it.

"Hey!"

She startles at the sudden sharpness of Mal's voice, dropping her pen onto the desk with a soft clatter. When she looks up, it's two expectant blondes meeting her guilty gaze.

"How much of the last five minutes did you actually hear, or were you asleep over there the entire time?" Mal bites, one brow up, red-painted lips scowling.

"I wasn't asleep," Regina defends, sitting up a little straighter and fussily rearranging papers on her desk. "I just… got distracted."

"Wonderful," Mal grumbles, and Kathryn sighs and tells the other blonde not to worry about it, she'll fill Regina in. Off her "You'd better," Mal turns and leaves Regina's office.

And then it's Kathryn looking at her, brows up, half amused and half bewildered. "What has you so in the clouds today?" she asks, pushing the spare chair in Regina's office closer to her desk and sitting in it. So they won't be catching up on work, then. Just gossip.

"Nothing," Regina tries to dismiss with a wave of her hand.

"No, no," Kathryn insists. "You were all glassy-eyed, biting your lip, staring off into space. That wasn't nothing, Regina. Fess up. We can't always talk about  _my_  problems."

Regina stops the  _Are you sure about that?_ from leaving her lips just in time, biting on the tip of her tongue for a moment before admitting, "There's… a guy. That I may be interested in. And from time to time, I find myself thinking of him. That's all."

The bewilderment is entirely gone from Kathryn's face now. It's all giddy interest as she leans in closer, drops her voice. "Who's this guy? Anyone I know?"

"No," Regina answers quickly, firmly. "Nobody from here. I'm not dumb enough to shit where I eat. He's… a friend. That's all."

"That wasn't a 'friend' sort of face you were making a few minutes ago."

"Yes. Well." Regina clears her throat - thank God it was just Kathryn and Mal, she thinks, and not another staff meeting she'd zoned out in the middle of. "I've just been single too long."

"I'll say," Kathryn agrees, and Regina shoots her a glare. The other woman sighs and shakes her head, insisting, "I didn't mean anything by it. But you're smart, you're sexy, you're single, and you shouldn't be. Graham was a long time ago, Regina. Maybe it's time to jump back into things. Is this guy interested in you?"

Regina lifts her shoulder, lets it fall. "I think so."

"So what are you waiting for?"

 _What, indeed?_  Regina wonders.

What, indeed.

**.::.**

The next Monday night lesson comes and it goes with hardly a sight of Regina - she'd been nursing a migraine that had her looking a bit grey and nauseous, and had gratefully taken Robin up on the offer to move their lesson to his place and see to it that Henry had something to eat before sending him home so she could have a bit of quiet.

Needless to say, his dinner of boxed mac and cheese and a bit of fruit had been nothing near the quality of their usual Monday night, but Henry didn't seem at all bothered by it. He'd returned the boy a bit later than he probably should have, but Regina's light had been out and she'd seemed none the wiser.

He'd gotten no berating texts or calls, just a pleasant wave as they crossed paths briefly on Sunday afternoon, and her usual pleasantries when he'd arrived for lessons the following night.

It's then that Robin sits through dinner trying very hard not to let his gaze wander down the open vee of Regina's top. It's another silk thing – she likes silk, he's noticed. This one is a peachy sort of color, and she's unbuttoned it to a criminal degree, far enough to reveal an enticing swell of cleavage and the lace of what he imagines is a camisole when he allows himself to imagine her underthings at all.

Which he shouldn't. Because it's Regina. Regina, who has been all smiles tonight. Who's made that chicken he'd liked so much a few weeks prior. Who is sipping beer from a longneck bottle this time just as he is, instead of pouring them their usual glasses of wine. Her lips are as distracting as her breasts, and he really ought to get going. Ought not to come back, to be honest, but he wouldn't want to disappoint Henry that way.

Henry, who is sitting not two feet away while Robin tries valiantly not to ogle his mother. He uses the boy as an excuse, then, a distraction - tearing his gaze from Regina and urging her son into a retelling of his latest comic book.

It works. It gets him through dinner with precious little distraction, and he knows he ought to go as soon as the food's been gobbled up, but somehow he ends up lingering in the kitchen with Regina, clearing plates and chuckling about young boys, about where ever will she store all these comics of his if they keep amassing more and more of them. About the ones Robin himself read when he was a boy, and how his father had thrown them all away one summer when he'd been visiting his mother's family and how incensed he'd been then. He should go, but he loves the sound of her voice, the ease of conversation they've settled into these last few weeks.

He so likes  _her_.

"You know, I was wrong about you," she tells him as they stand near her kitchen sink, Robin rinsing dishes before handing them off to her for loading into the dishwasher.

She's looking at him warmly, and Robin feels a slick churn of guilt in his belly. He's keeping secrets from her, keeping the truth of his transgression against her family tucked safely into his pocket, and he should not be doing this. Should not keep accepting her invitations for dinner. Should not keep lingering to help her clean up, or asking if her hair's just had a trim, or wondering what it would be like to nibble on that soft bottom lip.

Fighting the urge to sigh his frustration with himself, he passes her another damp dish and simply tells her, "No, you weren't."

She gives him a look. One of her looks. One of the ones that tells him he's being absolutely daft, although they come with much less consternation than they used to. Now her mouth is almost smiling, the corners fighting not to tilt up as she shakes her head slightly.

"I thought you were a lazy, drunken criminal on a downward spiral, who could very well have been a danger to my son," she tells him, and he knows all that, knew it from the moment she kicked him out of her home, coffee in hand.

"You were right," he says, because she was, he had been all that.

One of her brows lifts and falls. "That morning, maybe. But we both know that's not really who you are." Her hand falls on his as he reaches for another plate, gives it a little squeeze. "I'm glad you're teaching Henry; it gave me a chance to see the real you."

She's close. Standing right next to him, and he supposes she always has been, but it feels closer now than it had even moments before. He can smell her perfume, and her hand is soft and warm atop his. He stares at it, stares, and then looks to her, and she's looking at his face, drops her gaze to his lips for a moment, then back up. Not intentional, not deliberate, but he knows she's thinking of kissing him, knows even before she takes a slow breath in and out, swallows, her lips pursing slightly as she does, then parting.

God, he wants to taste those lips.

 _No_.

He cannot do this.

He should go.

She glances toward the living room, where Henry is supposed to be working on his reading for school, glances like she's looking to make sure they have privacy, and Robin knows this is it. This is his last moment of escape.

If he lets her kiss him now, he'll be gone entirely, even more besotted with her than he already is.

So he forces his lips to move, his voice to speak, says, "I should get going," and takes a step back, ducking his head slightly and lifting a hand to scratch at the back of it. He looks to her, hopes he's not grimacing outwardly as much as he is inwardly, and watches as she closes herself back up. Watches the flicker of rejection on her face, her deep inhale, and then she's smiling politely, tightly, telling him,  _Of course_ , and reaching for a Tupperware crammed with several drumsticks of the barbequed chicken they'd had for dinner.

"I know how much you like them," she tells him as she passes the food his way, and she's still perfectly pleasant, but there's a detachment to her voice. A hint of something that is off, that is different from the way she's started to speak to him lately. In private moments like this one.

He takes the plastic container from her hand, draws it away slowly, wishing he could just tell her everything, all of it. Just spill his guts for her, confess his crimes, and have her brush them aside, and tell him she wants him regardless, just as much as he wants her. But he cannot risk that, he's not sure enough of her. He's not absolutely positive she wouldn't turn him in, and then what of Roland… And besides, she deserves better than him, deserves more.

So he gives her only a terribly inadequate, "Goodnight, Regina."

She nods, says nothing.

He feels awful, like a jerk, like a rude, hurtful, criminal on a downward spiral as he turns tail on her and trudges through the living room, bids goodbye to Henry and scoops up his guitar.

The next week, after their lesson, there are only two plates at the table, and Regina meets him at the kitchen's threshold, holding out his Tupperware full of pasta salad without a word.

So that's that, then.


	14. Chapter 14

"You're home early," John comments as Robin walks in the door, clutching the dinner she still packed him for reasons unknown. He gets paid now, she doesn't need to offset, but he thinks maybe she likes cooking for him – no, just cooking. Not for him, there isn't a "for him" anymore, he'd seen to that, and stomped on her heart to do so. Robin feels another sharp flare of guilt, grips the Tupperware more tightly as if it's somehow holding on to a last, kind piece of her.

"Yeah," he tells his roommate, walking right past him into the kitchen to get a fork without any more explanation than that.

He comes back and settles onto the old, worn leather couch, popping the top off his dinner and stabbing a piece of rotini with his fork rather harder than might have been necessary.

"You gonna tell me what's wrong, or just keep sulking like you have been all week?"

Robin glances up to find John looking over at him from the other side of the couch. Expectantly.

"It's nothing," he mutters, taking a bite. It's delicious, as always. Everything she cooks is delicious. He misses her, and it's only been a week. He's a bloody fool, should have stayed away to begin with. He's the one who got them into this mess, and now she's the one hurting for it. (Him, too, but he deserves it. He brought this all down on himself. Regina, though, Regina is innocent.)

"You piss her off?"

"Who?"

"Regina."

Robin just scowls harder, shoves more pasta into his mouth.

"Did she fire you?"

"No, she did not–" Robin begins as soon as he's swallowed, voice laced heavily with annoyance. Then, he heaves a sigh and shakes his head. "She didn't do this, I did."

"What kind of 'this' are we talking about?" John asks, taking a sip from the beer he's been nursing, a plate on the table in front of him, empty now save a smear of ketchup and some crumbs.

"I…" Robin stares down at the noodles and veg in his palm, a few chunks of grilled chicken breast nestled amongst the peas and peppers. "I made her think I don't want to be with her."

For a second, it's all silence, and then John says, a bit thrown, "Oh. I wondered about that - the two of you. You've been spending a lot of time over there." Robin grunts, takes another bite. "Do you? Want to be with her?"

Robin pulls a face, tossing his barely-touched dinner to the coffee table as he bites, "Oh, not at all, I've been moping around the place for a week because I'm so thrilled to bits to  _not_  be with Regina."

John holds up his hands innocently (one still clutching his longneck), and then asks, "If you want her so much, then what's the problem? Whatever dumbass thing you did to make her think you're not interested, go fix it."

John takes another pull on his beer as Robin mutters, "I can't."

"Why not?"

"It's complicated."

"I believe in you," John jokes at him, before the last of the beer goes down the hatch with a steep pour. Then John sets the bottle next to his plate, settling back and reasoning, "You used to charm the pants off girls all the time, and I know Regina's no blushing groupie, but you'd think you could at least get yourself out of the doghouse. Buy her flowers or something."

If only it were that simple. Robin would kill for this to just be a case of his usual foot-in-mouth disease, just some stupid thing he'd done and could make up for. But this is… a mess. It's a bloody sodding mess, as it's always been, and for the last few days now he's felt every bit as much of a worthless git as he had when he'd woken up piss drunk on her couch all those months ago.

He stares at the pasta on the table, well aware that John is awaiting some sort of response from him. He's not looking at him, is watching the crime show on the TV in front of them, but Robin knows his mate well enough to know he's not really paying attention. He's waiting Robin out. But what can Robin even say? The truth?

Sod it all. Maybe it's time to come clean to  _someone_.

"Those people I robbed before Christmas, they were Regina's parents."

Robin's heart begins to beat hard, fast. He hasn't told anyone who he'd stolen from, not even John. He'd told him only that it was someone he'd done a job for. This is the first time he's confessed the victims of his crime out loud, and it has blood rushing in his ears.

John mutes the TV, and when Robin hazards a glance his way, the man's brows are nearly up to his wild hairline, his eyes like saucers.

"Shit, Robin, does she know?"

"Of course she doesn't," Robin sighs, collapsing back into the sofa cushions and rubbing thumb and forefinger along his brow, squeezing his skull at the temples.

"What the fuck are you doing over at her house every week?"

"Teaching her son the bloody guitar! What the hell do you think I'm doing? Casing the joint?"

"That's not what I meant," John defends. "I mean you're a damn idiot for spending all that time with someone whose family could put you in jail. And now you fell for her? What were you thinking?"

"Pretty much exactly what you just said, every damn time I see her," Robin admits, reaching for the pasta again even though his appetite is now next to nothing. "That I should keep away from her, that it doesn't matter how incredibly hot she is, or how smart, or sharp-tongued, or how much I want to… That I'll hurt her, and I should back off."

"And yet you stayed for dinner every week," John points out.

Robin has no good answer for that, so he takes another bite. A big one, as much as he can fit on the fork.

"Are you  _going_  to tell her?" John asks, and Robin slides his gaze over again. How can he? What if it goes incredibly poorly? What if he loses his son? He doesn't have to say anything, John can see it all on his face. He must do, because he sighs and shakes his head, and says, "Man, you either have to fess up, or stop going over there. I've known you for a long time, and you've got that look. The one you get when you're already gone about a girl. If you keep seeing her, all you'll do is hurt her."

"I already have," Robin tells him quietly.

"Well, then by all means, keep it up," John tells him, his words dry and insincere.

Robin eats the rest of his dinner in silence, and wonders if he can stomach letting Henry down, too.

**.::.**

"Why didn't Robin stay for dinner?" Henry asks as Regina is clearing their plates, picking off the last few pieces of pasta salad from Henry's (he'd declared himself full near the end of helping number two) and popping them in her mouth.

"Hmm?"

"Robin. He usually has dinner with us."

 _Yes, yes he does_ , she thinks.  _And what a mistake that had been_. She gives their plates a rinse as Henry waits for her answer.

She supposes she should have thought of this, should have known Henry would ask, but she'd been too busy nursing her own feelings of rejection to consider what her son would think. So she grasps for a way to excuse the man's absence, and comes up with only a dumb, "Oh, he had to… He had to go."

Henry narrows his eyes. Her son is not stupid; he knows when something is up.

"Did something happen between you two?"

Regina scoffs slightly, shakes her head, slides the plates into the dishwasher. "What could possibly have happened between me and  _Robin_?"

"You like each other."

Regina shakes her head, bending under the sink to grab a detergent packet from the bag down there and pop it into the washer as she says, "If by that you mean that we're cordial and neighborly–"

Now it's Henry scoffing, a perfect imitation of her own, and shaking his head. "No, you  _like_  each other. I can tell."

She closes the washer, pushes the button to start it and turns to face her son.

Her brows lift doubtfully, and Regina tries to push down on the ache in her chest at how true his words are – at least from her side of the equation anyway. Clearly not from Robin's. "Really?" she questions dryly.

"Yep," he tells her, and then with all the confidence in the world, "I see the way you look at each other. And you don't look at John like that."

"Henry," she says, turning away again and reaching for a dishtowel to wipe down the perfectly clean countertop. "You're wrong."

"Nope. I'm not," he declares smugly, but he leaves her alone anyway. She hears his footfalls up the stairs a minute later.

Regina sags against the countertop and lets her carefully controlled expression melt away. How in the world did she get so turned around about Robin Locksley?

She tells herself she's being ridiculous, that nothing even happened between them, and she has no reason to feel this… hurt over the whole thing. But rejection is rejection, even as subtle as it might have been, and Regina feels the burn of it acutely.

**.::.**

"I've gotta hand it to you, Robin. This summer concert series was a great idea."

Robin glances over at August from his place at the tap and smiles. At least one thing in his life is working out at the moment. Wednesdays have always been a bit of a lull, so Robin had suggested recently (at the gentle prodding of Will) that perhaps they could add live music to the night, feature some local bands. He had contacts, after all, could easily line up a few weeks worth of performances.

August had agreed to try it out, and now here they are. The Rabbit Hole is packed, and Robin has been pouring a steady stream of drinks, raking in a pretty pile of tips. And he gets to hear his mates play without having to drag himself out to a bar and pay some sort of cover charge or drink minimum, or give up a night he might rather spend alone on the couch – everybody wins.

"I'm glad it's worked out," he tells his boss. "Both for us and for Sherwood." He jerks his head toward the band presently onstage, Will's band, who are introducing the next song of their set.

"The customers like them," August says with an easy smile, stepping up to pull a beer as Robin sets about mixing a Long Island Iced Tea. It's a comfortable sort of routine - working the bar with August on the busier nights – and Robin has found he likes bartending more than most of the other odd jobs he's kept over the years. It suits him.

"...And as a thank-you for gettin' us this sweet gig, I'd like to call an old mate up to the mic to give us a hand with a number or two."

Robin freezes. Oh. Oh, no.

He glances up to find Will looking straight at him, lifting a hand and beckoning him as he asks, "Mind if I borrow your bartender for a tune, Mr. Booth?"

Robin glances at August, not sure if he wants to be saved or permitted, and finds the other man looking toward him, brows raised in interest, grinning. "By all means," he tells Robin. "I'll cover the bar."

**.::.**

Regina is tired of running. She's run every night for nearly the last two weeks, and it usually helps sort her mind, but tonight… well, tonight she's tired. Tired, and… quiet. She feels like quiet, and running is loud, running is headphones pumped up with a steady beat to keep her feet hitting the belt again, again, again, and she wants… peace. So tonight, she's sent Henry off to bed with a kiss and a smile, and settled onto the piano bench, bared the keys.

For a while, she just tinkers. Doesn't really play anything, just fiddles with the notes, picks out the melody of the song Henry had been practicing earlier. Settling in, mulling over what to play. She melts into some Chopin, something she's known by heart for a very long time, but bails out in the middle. And then a few chords, the beginning of something familiar, "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay." She's a good way through the first verse, singing along softly before she remembers the last time she'd played this. Here. With Robin. That first night he'd come over all those months ago.

If you'd told her then that the memory of that night would have her aching, have her feeling foolish and overly attached, she'd have laughed in your face. But here she is, letting her fingers crash against the keys in a discordant mess of sound as she abandons that song, too.

She needs something else to play. Something untouched by a certain attractive British guitar playing bartender.

**.::.**

Robin hesitates. Is this really happening?

"Come on now, mate, don't be shy," Will encourages. "I know it's been a while, but I don't think you've forgotten how to strum a guitar." Before Robin has a chance to decide yes or no, Will's gaze is sweeping the rest of the room, and he's urging, "You lot all want to hear your bartender sing a song or two, don't you?"

The response is surprisingly positive, particularly from the regulars at tables five and six, a bunch of women who've been coming for Thirsty Thursdays for ages and have embraced the live music with a good bit of enthusiasm.

Will tuts and shakes his head, sighing dramatically. "Always popular with the ladies, this one," he grumbles good-naturedly, laughing when there's a distinctly masculine whoop from the back of the bar in response. "Ah, and the gentlemen, it seems! You've your pick now, Robin, don't keep them all waiting."

There are far too many people eyeing him now, patrons smirking, grinning, watching expectantly. He supposes he has no choice at this point. It's chicken out, or sack up.

Robin tosses away the towel he'd picked up in an attempt to look busy, and takes a deep breath, heading for the end of the bar and hoping Will has something in mind that he knows.

As Robin makes his way to the little platform stage the band's set up on, Will drums up the crowd a bit, whistling and clapping himself until they're all making a good racket. Robin steps up onto the stage and gestures for everyone to settle down, leaning into the mic and urging, "Alright, alright, let's not all get too excited. You've not heard me sing yet. Might be about to change your tune."

Alan passes him a guitar, stepping off the stage for a piss or a drink, who knows. Robin doesn't have much time to wonder about it as he slings the guitar over his shoulder, palms a little damp with nerves over performing again after so long.

"So, what'll it be then, Will?"

**.::.**

She settles on  _Once_ , if for no other reason than that the songbook is still sitting on the piano, propped open. Henry has been trying to learn the songs in between what he's been learning from Robin. Some of the chords are a bit above his level, but Robin has taught him how to read chord diagrams, so he tries nonetheless, frowning and placing his fingers in on the right strings, his tongue between his teeth as he concentrates.

She likes watching him, her boy, likes watching him try, watching him rock out as best a ten-year-old novice can. And secretly, she hopes one day she and Henry can play a little something together, so she doesn't discourage his attempts at the  _Once_  songbook - after all, most of it is for guitar and piano, and, well, isn't that just perfect? In fact, she's spent a decent amount of time with the book herself, late at night like this, learning the songs. Just in case.

He's left the book open to somewhere in the middle, and Regina thumbs back a few pages, back to the song she knows best.

She presses against the keys gently, slowly, picking out the first notes of the song, and she knows as she begins to sing softly that this isn't going to help any with the funk she's been stuck in for the last couple of weeks.

_I don't know you but I want you_

_All the more for that_

_Words fall through me and always fool me_

_And I can't react_

_And games that never amount to more than they're meant_

_Will play themselves out_

**.::.**

Will suggests a cover - and he can work with that, but which?

"This one used to be in your set, if I recall," Will says, beginning to play, and Robin recognizes the chords immediately.

Marian had loved the movie, had watched it maybe a hundred times. Had said it reminded her of him, the brooding musician who found himself again through a girl and a song. He'd never really understood the correlation - he'd been in relatively good spirits when he'd met Marian, but perhaps she'd known something he hadn't, because it hits him hard now.

He joins in, and Will melts out, leaving Robin to start the song alone, just himself, a borrowed guitar, and a song from  _Once_.

He clears his throat, hopes his voice is in decent shape after speaking up over the band all night.

"This one's called 'Say it to Me Now,'" he says into the mic over the intro, "Some of you may know it, if you've any good taste in films."

And then he sings.

_Scratching at the surface now_

_And I'm trying hard to work it out_

_So much has gone misunderstood_

_And this mystery only leads to doubt_

_And I'm looking for a sign_

_In this dark uneasy time_

_And if you have something to say_

_You'd better say it now_

**.::.**

It definitely isn't helping, Regina thinks, past the first chorus now and feeling herself settle into a good wallow. She doesn't know why she feels like this, she has no right to. He didn't break her heart - she'd never given it to him in the first place. It had been a few dinners, a few weeks of good conversation, some easy smiles and what she thought was flirtation. Nothing more, and frankly, that's not much.

_Well, you have suffered enough_

_And warred with yourself_

_It's time that you won_

For a moment she pauses, breathless, losing her place as she hears the words slip off her tongue. It sounds like him, and her, like that night in the kitchen after Mother's Day, and it wasn't nothing. It wasn't 'not much.'

That was connection, it was… intimacy, it was… the closest she's been to any other person in years, the rawest she's been, the most laid-bare. And she thought he'd been there with her, had thought there had been something blossoming between them. (She remembers the scratch of his beard against her hair, the warm cotton of his shirt against her cheek, his hands smoothing gently over her, and all of it makes her stomach hurt.)

She thought it had meant even a fraction as much to him as it had to her, but she'd been wrong. Wrong and stupid and reading far too much into what was clearly, in retrospect, just an act of friendship. Just one person being kind to another in their moment of need. Nothing more.

And then she'd gone and let herself get all moony-eyed over him, had nearly  _kissed_  him, for God's sake, and had, of course, sent him running for the hills.

She's embarrassed, more embarrassed than she had been when she was weeping over her mother – or maybe that's what she's so embarrassed about, after all. He'd seen her naked, so terribly, vulnerably naked. Had seen right down to the battered heart of her. And walked away.

And now whenever she sees him, she remembers that feeling. That moment, that openness, that comfort, and she  _yearns_.

Her eyes are suddenly wet, her throat thick as she moves her fingers over the keys again.

**.::.**

Robin shuts his eyes and lets the moment take him. Puts aside the clink of glasses and the low murmurs of conversation, muscle memory carrying him through, his hands moving without thought, lyrics tugging their way out from somewhere in the back of his brain. And it's a good thing, too, because the rest of it is full of her.

Nothing new, that, but he feels her in this moment. Feels like he's singing to himself and not a room full of people.

' _Cause this is what you've waited for_

_Your chance to even up the score_

_And as these shadows fall on me now_

_I will somehow, yeah_

He wants her, wants her so desperately, wants to ease her hurt and hold her hand and see her smile, listen to the warmth of her voice, her laugh. But he knows, deep down, down to his core, that he is no good for her. That he could only hurt her – already has, more even than she knows.

' _Cause I'm picking up a message, Lord_

_And I'm closer than I've ever been before_

_So if you have something to say_

_Say it to me now_

John is right, and he knows that. Knows he needs to either shit or get off the pot. To tell her his whole truth, or say nothing and keep away from her.

Trouble is, neither option sounds like something he can stomach.

**.::.**

_Take this sinking boat and point it home_

_We've still got time_

_Raise your hopeful voice_

_You have a choice_

_You've made it now_

A tear escapes and slips down her cheek, the melody gapping as she lifts a hand to brush it away, feeling suddenly terribly lonely.

That's what she's been feeling–not heartbreak, but some sort of yawning empty space where his companionship had been.

She just…  _misses_  him. The ease of things, the friendship. She's blown a hole in them and now things are just…. wrong.

She's such an idiot, such a fool.

And she cannot stop thinking about him.

**.::.**

"You know," August begins, as Robin takes his place behind the bar again, the whistling and applause that followed his turn at mic resurfacing for a moment as Will says something about giving another round for the barman. "You never told me you play.

"It's been a while," Robin says, and then, "I teach the neighbor's kid one night a week, but other than that… It's been a long while now since I've played for anyone other than my kid or the dog. Until tonight, anyway."

"Would you like to?" the other man offers, and Robin stills.

"Would I like to what?"

"Play," August answers. "You're good. Really good. I could throw you in on a Wednesday sometime. I'm sure our regulars would love another shot at hearing you play – I could probably even talk Ruby into coming back to cover for you. You know how she likes foreign guys with guitars."

Robin chuckles, takes a few empties that have just been deposited on the bar in front of him, his mind traveling a mile a minute at August's offer. "So she's said," he mutters, and then, "You'd really want me to play? Here?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"I just… it's been a while," he murmurs, thinking of the last time he'd really played, the last tense days of a fizzling band, the frustration, the tension. The actual people sitting in a dark, dingy bar listening to them play, moving to the music. The connection. A deep-down part of him aches at the memories, and he can't deny he felt a little zing of the old satisfaction as he took the stage with Will.

"About three minutes by my count."

Robin chuckles, pointing out, "That was one song. With a backing band."

That redhead that's been frequenting chooses that moment to sidle up to the bar, ordering two redheaded sluts with a wink for Robin. He gives her a sly, teasing look before he tells her, "Coming momentarily," earning a short, sharp laugh, and an  _After seeing you with a guitar, darling, me too_. He's the one chuckling now, and he only charges her for one. She leaves him a tip generous enough that she could have paid for the second, and he takes the bills with a flash of dimples, and a "Thanks, babe," then glances back at August to find him busy with customers at the other end of the bar.

Could he do it? he wonders. Play again, for real. Do a solo gig. It should be the goal, he thinks. It's what he's always wanted to do, what he'd long thought of himself as - a musician. But lately, the last few months, nearly the last year now, he's been something else. An electronics installation specialist, a thief, a freeloader, a screw-up. To tell the truth, it's been quite a while since Robin saw himself as a musician first and foremost. But he can't deny that he looks forward to Monday nights, and not just for Regina (guilt throbs again in his chest at just the thought of her name, her smile, her eyes, her mouth, her–stop it, Robin) or a home-cooked meal. He likes playing, really truly enjoys teaching. Friday through Monday, that's when he feels most whole. Roland, and music (don't think about Regina).

So yes, perhaps he should, perhaps he ought to. And it's just one night, from the sound of it. Just a couple of sets. Just enough to dip his toes back in.

Of course, there's the matter of him having nothing really to play. He'd have to go back through his repertoire and choose songs, tweak them so they'll sound proper acoustic and solo instead of with drums and bass and backup vocals. But he could do that, that would only be a bit of work, a few nights, he could–

"I can see I've gotten you thinking," August smirks from far closer than he was the last time Robin took note of him. "You can practically see the wheels spinning in your head."

Robin jerks a shoulder and scratches at the back of his neck, admitting, "I'm not used to going solo, but I could probably throw something together. I'd need a little bit of time."

August waves a hand at him, says, "Of course, no rush. We're booked a few weeks out at this point anyway. Just let me know when you're ready."

When he's ready. That's the question, isn't it?

What is he ready for?

**.::.**

There are daisies on her desk on Thursday morning, hot pink and summery, in a glass vase planted firmly in front of her computer monitor. The sight of them has her insides rioting, torn between anticipation and dread, confusion, heartache. Her first thought is Robin, but that's silly, pathetic. Second thought is her father – it's probably him, probably Daddy. He does this every once in a while, surprises her with a little bouquet. But when she plucks the card from between the stems, it's not from her father at all.

In fact, it's not from a florist – the card is hand-written, not printed.

" _For you. – S"_

These flowers were hand-delivered. She knows the handwriting, has seen it scrawled on countless meeting notes and Post-Its. Sidney.

She smiles a little despite herself. Robin may not be interested in her, but she'll always have Sidney to boost her confidence.

Still, she takes the card and walks the short distance to his office, knocking lightly on the door as she pokes her head in. He looks up from his computer and smiles, turning his chair away from his work and toward her. "Regina, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Don't play coy," she scolds mildly, smiling bewilderedly and holding up the card. "Flowers?"

"Guilty as charged," he tells her with a little shrug.

"Why?"

"You've seemed a bit down the last few days," he tells her, and oh, God, has she? She's been doubling down into her work, trying to use it as a distraction from her aching heart, but perhaps she's been more transparent than she thought. Although, this is Sidney – he's always looking too hard, always noticing things other people don't. "I thought maybe they'd make you smile."

"Oh," she says simply, touched. "They did. Thank you."

Sidney's smile warms, and he leans back in his chair, gestures to the empty seat nearby and offers, "Do you want to talk about it?"

Oh, boy, does she not. Certainly not with Sidney of all people. Somehow crying to the man who's in love with her about the man she has feelings for seems terribly unwise. And she likes to keep Sidney at a little bit of a distance, anyway. It's safer that way – smarter all around not to lead him on.

So she shakes her head, tells him, "No, I'm fine. Just a long week, that's all."

Disappointment flickers across his face before he can hide it – just a moment of it, you could blink and miss it. And then he's telling her, "If you change your mind, you know where to find me."

"I do." She taps the card against her fingertips and confirms, "We have that call with TLK at 10:30?"

"On the dot."

"Great. Thank you again." She wiggles the little card at him, then tucks it into her pocket as she turns to go.

When she gets back to her office, she clears a space for the flowers on her desk, somewhere she can see them out of the corner of her eye while she works. The little shock of pink lingers there, catching her attention from time to time, and she is equally warmed by the kind gesture and barbed by the ever-present reminder that they're a gift from the wrong man.

**.::.**

Regina likes dirt. Or more accurately, soil. She likes it soft and dark and sticking to her fingers. You'd never know it to look at her immaculate home, but she likes dirt.

Which is why she'd gotten up early this Saturday morning, and headed down to the greenhouse. It's June already, a bit late for planting, but her perennials just aren't giving her quite the showing she'd expected this year (par for the course in her life right now, she thinks). She wants a bit more… pop.

So she'd lined her trunk with a tarp and loaded it up with annuals. A few to fill the duller, empty spaces of the bed, and, on a wild hair, a few flower boxes to add to the porch deck. She buys vegetables this year, too – not quite as much as she'd like. Someday, she thinks, she'll do a proper vegetable garden, but for now, it's only things she can grow in strategically placed pots on the front porch. A small tomato plant, and some green beans. Fresh herbs.

She spends the morning in the dirt, planting, and soaking up the warmth of the sun against her back.

Mid-morning, she gets a visitor in the form of Tuck, and she tells the dog in no uncertain terms that he is to stay far, far away from her flowers this year. There had been an unfortunate incident last summer wherein he'd decided her hostas were the perfect place to bury his toys.

"Tuck! Come back!"

She lifts her head toward the sound – the bright, high scolding of a preschooler. Roland is trotting toward her on legs still almost chubby from his toddler years, in shorts and an Arsenal football t-shirt, scowling adorably.

"Hi, Regina!" he announces as he skids to a stop with such short notice that he almost bowls right into the dog.

"Hello, Roland," she greets, sitting back on her heels for a moment. "Did you come to collect a fugitive?"

She finds herself smiling as his little brow furrows, his mouth pinching into a frown that makes his dimples wink out for a moment. "Huh?"

She points at the dog. "It sounds like he escaped."

"Oh!" He brightens, nods once firmly. "Yep. We're walkin' him."

"Are you, then?"

"We are." Robin, his shadow falling across her as he ambles up behind son and dog. He smiles at her, but it's… off. Doesn't reach his eyes and not just because she thinks he means it to be a bit rueful. "I told someone he could put the dog on the leash, on account of he's such a big, responsible boy now. It seems things went a bit awry."

Roland makes a guilty face, lips pressed into a line, dark eyes sliding to the ground, then the dog in question. "He's bigger'n me," is all the excuse he gives, and Regina can't help a little chuckle. He really is a cute kid…

She reaches out, swipes a dirty finger against the tip of his nose and says, "Not for long. You're growing like a weed."

Roland giggles and wipes at his nose as Robin gives a little snort and mutters, "You're telling me. I'm the one who's got to take him clothes shopping this weekend."

Regina casts her gaze up at him, the bright sun in the sky beyond him making her squint a little. "There are worse things, I'm sure."

"In the grand scheme, yes, but why his mum asks me to take him when she's grumbled about every single thing I've bought him in the last year is beyond me."

For a moment, everything feels normal again. Familiar. Just two friends, neighbors, single parents, griping mildly about the everyday annoyances of raising boys. Maybe they can get this back, smooth things over…

"Daddy, can I plant with Regina and you walk Tuck?" Roland asks suddenly, flashing his father a sweet grin, brows up encouragingly.

Robin hesitates, looks between the two of them. "I - well - We don't want to disturb her, Roland. I'm sure she's got plenty of work to do."

"Actually, I'm almost done," Regina tells him. "Just a few left; he can help if he wants." It occurs to her suddenly that maybe he doesn't  _want_  Roland to linger, that maybe  _he_  doesn't want to linger, so she backtracks, adding, "If it's alright with you, that is."

Robin shakes his head shortly, says, "No, yeah, that's fine. I'll just…" He bends, clips the leash in his hand to Tuck's collar and mutters, "We'll be back, I suppose." His hand falls to Roland's head, giving his hair a little muss as he urges, "You be good for Regina, yeah?"

"Yep," Roland agrees, already plunking himself onto his knees beside her and paying Robin absolutely zero mind. Regina glances Roland's way as he reaches for one of the plants left in the plastic tray, urging him gently to hold on, please, to wait just a minute, but when she looks back up to bid Robin goodbye, she's met with the sight of his back, already a good four feet away, Tuck trotting behind him.

 _Well, goodbye then,_  she thinks with a little twinge of hurt before she turns her attention to the little boy beside her, passing him her trowel.

"Here, let's dig this one a little hole…"

**.::.**

On Monday, she doesn't even bother to greet him. When the bell rings at 6:55, she hollers to Henry to get the door, it's Robin, and she stays in the kitchen, busying herself with the ratatouille she's making. Even with a mandolin, it's tedious, but the end result is worth it - one of her favorite dishes, and Henry's too. She's been craving it for days, and probably should have made it yesterday – would have if she hadn't gotten pulled into an emergency conference call that had her slapping sandwiches together for Sunday dinner before shutting herself into her office until everything was sorted out. Afterward, the idea of all that prep work had seemed much less appealing than it had in the late afternoon, so she's decided to push it to tonight.

A decision that has absolutely nothing to do with keeping her occupied with prep up until Henry's lesson time, while also ensuring that she has no excuse to invite Robin to stay for a dinner that won't be ready until well after said lesson ends. (What does it say, she wonders, when even  _she_  doesn't believe her lies?)

Is it childish to avoid him? Maybe. But he'd started it. (What is she, five? she wonders with a shake of her head as she slides the ratatouille into the oven and sets up about cleaning the kitchen.)

His walk with Tuck on Saturday had lasted long enough for Regina and Roland to finish the flowers and move on to learning the names of all the herbs she was growing on the porch. She'd cleaned the dirt off his hands and knees, and enlisted his help along with Henry's in making a batch of fresh lemonade – one they'd taken to the porch in tall, iced glasses, sipping as they sat on the bench there, enjoying the summer midday. And still no sign of Robin and Tuck.

She'd begun to feel a bit like a babysitter by the time he'd come strolling up the block from the opposite direction he'd set off in, unable to quell her annoyance as he'd climbed her porch and apologized for taking so long. He'd lost track of time, he'd said, and she'd pointed out that he could have  _told_  her he was taking the dog on a walk to  _Virginia_  when he set off.

He'd looked at her, then, not exactly wounded, but… pained, and for a second it had looked like he was going to say something. His lips had parted, he'd sucked in a breath, held it, and then, "Roland, it's time for lunch. Come on."

Roland had waved goodbye to her and Henry, and had left with his father. They were barely to the sidewalk before Henry was eyeing Regina skeptically and asking, "Did you two have a fight?"

He's observant, her boy, and the shift between her and Robin has not been subtle, but it's also not something she wants to discuss with him. There are some things he's simply too young for.

So she'd turned to her son, asked him pointedly, "Did you empty the dishwasher this morning like I asked you to?"

There'd been no mistaking her intent: that particular avenue of conversation wasn't going to be traversed.

Henry's exasperated sigh had followed him into the house, and now here they are. Monday, and awkward, and avoiding each other.

With the ratatouille in the oven, she's out of distractions, so she starts a load of laundry, lets the wash cycle run, and is in the process of switching it to the dryer when eight o'clock rolls around. She knows, because she hears Robin's voice, calling back down the hall: "Goodnight, Regina!"

She can't decide if he sounds annoyed, but he certainly doesn't sound thrilled, and why are they doing this? Avoiding the issue, like a couple of cowards? They'd had a moment, it had passed, and now they were drawing it out, making things uncomfortable, and for what? Because she's gotten her pride hurt? Because she's lonely?

She  _is_ being childish, and it's time she stopped. Time she rectified this as best she can – she was the one to start it after all.

Decision made, she lets the dryer door shut with a bang and jogs her way down the hallway.

**.::.**

"Robin!"

He's out the door already, nearly down the steps when he hears her calling after him softly. He stops and turns, ascends again slowly as she glances back anxiously and shuts the front door behind her. He shifts his guitar from one hand to the other and watches her take a deep breath. She looks troubled, her brow pinched, her arms crossing over her chest and she's not looking him in the eye.

Shit.

He's about to get fired, isn't he? About to be told she'd rather not have him coming round anymore. He's sure of it.

He's sure of it, but he's wrong, because what she actually says is much more surprising: "I'm sorry." She looks up at him, then, finally, and elaborates, "About the other week, in the kitchen, after Henry's lesson. And since then… If I made you feel uncomfortable, or…"

"No," he assures, shaking his head, his belly flooding with relief and twisting with tension at the same time. Sweat blooms on his palms, and he wonders if maybe firing him wouldn't have been better, because he hates that she's still thinking of this, that it's been bothering her now for a fortnight, that it has her worried enough to follow after him and apologize. Not that he's any better, but he feels no guilt about his own twisted up emotions. "No, not at all."

He hears John in his head, telling him to walk away. He doesn't move.

Regina relaxes visibly, nodding and then saying, "Good. I thought maybe…" Her head tilts slightly, and that brow furrows again as she tells him, "It seemed like – there were signs I must've misread – I thought you might be… interested, and…"

"I am." Bollocks. It's out of his mouth before he can help it, and he watches her straighten slightly, her mouth drawing into a confused pout (God, he wants to kiss her - he  _cannot_  kiss her). He shouldn't have said that. Shit. Of course, he's said it now, so he might as well… try to explain. "I'm very interested, believe me. But I…" He sucks in a breath, blows it out. "You're a lovely woman - smart, and successful, and bloody gorgeous, with a great kid, and I just don't think I'd be very good for you."

It's a truth, if not the whole truth. Unfortunately, she's not impressed.

Regina scoffs a little laugh, shaking her head. "Is that what this is about?"

Robin shrugs and tightens his grip on his guitar. "I'm a bit of a mess, Regina."

"I do know that," she says, and she's smiling now, that brilliant smile, her confidence returning, blissfully ignorant of how wrong she is. How much she doesn't know that. How bad of an idea it would be for them to get tangled up. "And yet, I find myself oddly attracted to you regardless."

"You deserve better," he tells her, wants to tell her she deserves the moon, the stars, a throne and crown, a thousand other ridiculous things worthy of her beauty, but he's not an idiot, and he's not in love with her, and he doesn't want to scare her off completely. And he shouldn't be wanting anything from her; this can only end badly.

"I think that's for me to decide," she says then, "Not you."

"Regina…"

"Give me a reason. A good one. A  _better_  one," she challenges. "Give me a reason that we shouldn't… I don't know, go to the movies Friday night. Right now. And I'll drop it."

There are other reasons, there must be. Has to be. But she's standing there in a chiaroscuro of blue moonlight and yellow porchlight, her eyes midnight dark but still full of fire, of challenge, her tempting lips in a slight pucker as she waits, and he finds he suddenly cannot think. Cannot come up with another reason, another excuse - not one aside from the obvious, screaming through his brain: YOU BURGLARIZED HER PARENTS' HOME AND SHE WILL SURELY FIND OUT ABOUT IT, YOU'VE HORRIBLE LUCK, YOU MISERABLE SOD, DON'T YOU DARE SAY YES TO THIS MAGNIFICENT WOMAN, YOU WILL ONLY CAUSE HER PAIN.

But he doesn't have to say yes to her, because in saying nothing at all, he's said everything, and so she smirks, and nods smugly.

She says only one more thing before she turns and heads back inside:

"You'll pick me up at seven."


	15. Chapter 15

She'd laugh if it wasn't so absurd - the text message she gets from him late on Wednesday night. She's already in bed, reading, when she hears the ping of her cell phone and glances over to see his name on the screen. She reaches for the phone with a smile that fades quickly at his message.

_I'm not sure Friday is a good idea. Maybe we should reconsider..._

_Do you suddenly find me unattractive?_ , she shoots back, shaking her head at his persistent trepidation. She can't for the life of her figure out why he's so resistant to the whole thing, not now that she knows she hasn't been misreading anything and he does, in fact, want to date her. At least, that's what he'd said two days ago on her porch.

His response comes shortly thereafter ( _No, that's not it._ ), and she can't resist continuing to needle him:  _You've suddenly developed a fear of movie theaters?_

_No..._

_Single mothers?_

_Never. It's not you._

Regina scoffs, then scowls, thumbs tapping swiftly over the surface of her phone:  _Wow. I've never gotten the whole "it's not you, it's me" thing BEFORE a first date..._

_But it IS me._

She sighs then, and taps on his name, taps again to call him. This is ridiculous. She listens to the phone ring, once, twice, a third time, and then she can hear the ambient sounds of the bar over the line. She doesn't bother with the pleasantries, just starts in on him with, "In case you haven't noticed over the past several weeks,  _I like you_. And I know the skeletons in your closet - enough of them, anyway. So unless you're hiding something worse than your petty crimes, I expect to see you at seven sharp on Friday, ready to wine and dine me. I will not let you back out on this because you don't think you're good enough for me, Robin. I just won't."

For a moment, all she hears is background noise, and she worries maybe this was a pocket answer, and her whole tirade has gone to his Levis.

And then he sighs, heavy and defeated, and says, "It's incredibly likely that I'll break your heart."

"On one date?" she asks lightly.

**.::.**

Robin's frown deepens, and he scowls hard at the bottle of Absolut he's facing as Ruby chats up a patron just behind him. "What about Henry?" he attempts, because there has to be some way to back out of this mess without hurting her.

"What about Henry?"

He angles his body even more toward the back of the bar, pretending to straighten bottles, pretending to do an inventory check as he talks quietly. "What if we go out, and it's a disaster, and we can't stand the sight of each other anymore? What about his lessons?"

She barks a short little laugh, and he can almost hear her shake her head, roll her eyes. "You're being awfully dramatic. And I highly doubt it will come to that - we're both adults. Look, Robin, if you really don't want to go out this weekend, if you truly, genuinely don't, then tell me. And I'll understand."

He wishes he could. Wishes it was as simple as that. Wishes he could lie as effectively about this as he has about the secret he's keeping from her. But that's just it - he can keep secrets, he's proven marginally successful at that. But lying? Lying to her face? That he doesn't seem to be able to do.

So despite the twist in his guts he asks her, "Dinner before the movie or are we just going to gorge ourselves on popcorn?"

She makes this pleased little sound, this little hum, and Robin can't help but smile. He'll tell her. Someday. Maybe Friday. Soon.

He'll tell her soon, but not today.

**.::.**

"Who are you going out with?" Henry asks on Friday night, when Regina comes down the stairs in her dark wash skinny jeans and sleeveless red silk top that shows a considerable - but tasteful - amount of cleavage framed by the black lace of her camisole.

She'd told Henry she had plans tonight, but hasn't fessed up to what they are, or who they're with - she and Robin had both agreed that there's no need to tell Henry about all this unless it actually goes somewhere. But this is date attire - the snug jeans and the red pumps, the extra splash of perfume. He was young when she was with Graham, but he remembers, it seems. She can't fool him. But as grown up as he's getting, there's still no need to confuse him with the shifting lines of her relationship with their neighbor.

So she smiles at her son, cups a hand behind his head, and tells him, "That, sweetheart, is none of your business."

"Oh, come on!" he cries, but she just shakes her head. "It's someone I know, isn't it?"

She looks to Mary Margaret, telling her the usual: "You have my cell if you need me, I'll be back before midnight, and when he tries to cajole you into pizza, feel free to give in. You know where the cash is."

The younger woman laughs softly, and nods, agreeing, "Pizza it is. We're good here; you go on."

"You can't just bribe me with pizza," Henry points out, all sorts of surly now, with his crossed arms and his deep scowl.

Regina drops a kiss onto his furrowed brow and adjusts her purse on her shoulder, telling him to be good for Mary Margaret.

"It's Robin, isn't it?" Henry asks her, and she silently curses his intuition but manages to keep her face perfectly neutral as she bids them both goodnight.

"Have fun tonight!" Mary Margaret urges, following her to the door and muttering teasingly once they're out of Henry's earshot, "But not  _too_  much fun."

Regina smirks and shakes her head, and lets the sitter shut the door behind her.

It's only a few quick steps to Robin's (and she hopes Henry isn't peering out the windows, because if he is, the jig is up), and then she's knocking on his door.

He answers immediately, looking good enough to eat in a neat button-down t-shirt and dark jeans, smelling like a less pot-infused version of the cologne that had clung to her couch for a day or two after that night he'd spent there watching Henry. He opens his mouth as if to greet her, but whatever he was going to say gets stuck, his gaze raking over her, tongue swiping out for a moment to wet his lips.

"You look stunning," he tells her, and she grins. Nailed it.

"You're not so bad yourself," Regina returns, before asking, "Are you ready to go?"

"I am," he nods, and only when he swings it around to the front of him does she realize he's had an arm behind his back. It's gripping a small clutch of roses, lily-white ones this time. "For you."

She takes them with a coy smile, tells him, "Thank you, they're lovely," and then they're off.

**.::.**

They go for Italian food, which sparks a conversation on why that seems to be the go-to first date food (he points out that it's relatively mild and universally liked, she points out the potential for garlic breath, both of them laugh), and from there on out, the evening is smooth sailing. She's in a good mood - a great mood - all smiles and flirtation, and that top that draws his gaze down again and again despite his best efforts to keep it on her face (she looks good in red). They share a plate of fresh mozzarella and tomato, and she eats more veg than cheese, piling ribbons of basil onto a slice of juicy tomato and then forking off just half a piece of cheese to go with it. He notices her eating now, ever since that night in her kitchen, and he can't decipher if this is just Regina's preference for green things or if she's stressed. But when the waiter comes to ask for their meal choices, she orders manicotti and his little twinge of worry melts away.

They drink wine, and talk of their sons - and then agree not to talk of their sons, and chat instead of about where they each grew up. About music, and books. She's easy to be with, so perilously, painfully easy to talk to after all these months of friendship, and it makes him question if he ever needs to tell her his secret at all.

Maybe he doesn't. Maybe they can leave it in the past, maybe if she never knows, if she never finds out, things will be fine. (He just has to make sure he never meets her parents. Not a likely course of events if things get serious. He should just tell her… Rip the Band-Aid off and just tell her…)

"What is it?" she asks, tilting her head with a curious little frown.

"What is what?"

"You got all serious for a minute, and I don't think it was because of my tale about that Madonna concert when I was young." She smiles then, but it's nervous around the edges, and he wishes he was better at hiding from her. And is at the same time rather glad he's not – that inability to shield himself is one of the last things left making him feel like a good, honest man. His mercurial moods about this whole dating situation are putting her on edge, and he knows that. Can't help it. Wishes he could. He wishes a lot of things lately…

"I'm sorry," he grimaces. "My mind wandered."

Regina lets out a small scoff, pushing a bit of manicotti across her plate with her fork and looking mildly (and rightfully offended) when she says, "I'm glad my stories are so boring to you."

"It's not that," he assures, reaching across the table until his fingers brush hers as they reach for her wine. "You mentioned your father, and I was just… thinking of your parents." So much for not being able to lie - but it's a half-truth, he supposes. He  _was_  thinking about her parents.

"Ah," she nods, lifting that wine to her lips and sipping, then setting it down on the tabletop again. Her whole expression has shifted suddenly, gone a bit drawn and pensive, and he wonders if her parents are a sore subject for her tonight. She sets down her fork, only two-thirds done with her food and he reads too much into it and thinks they might be. "You want to talk about my parents?"

Not in the slightest. "Do you?"

Regina takes a deep breath in, a slow breath out, shifts a little in her seat and picks up her fork again, fiddling with it as she tells him quietly, "My mother's birthday is coming up."

She's anxious about it. He can see it written all over her - the tension in her mouth, the restless energy of her fingers, the way her gaze flicks from one item on the table to the next - fork, plate, glass, plate, napkin.

"Have you been in touch since…?" he asks her softly, leading.

"The Mother's Day from hell?" she chuckles, shaking her head. "No. I've seen my father, but… not her."

Robin feels a little lick of satisfaction at that that he probably has no right to. "Likely for the best," he tells her.

Her answer is careful, measured. "Yes. I'd say so. I think…" She trails off and Robin twirls the last of his spaghetti up onto his fork, shoves it in his mouth hoping she'll talk for another moment so he can chew. She doesn't disappoint. "I've been thinking I might just send her flowers. And stay away."

She says it like it's a combination of salvation and sin, like she's not sure if it's right, and he wonders who she talked to about these things before he moved in two doors down. Her gaze is on his now, dark and seeking. Robin swallows his food and nods, gives her what she needs.

"I can't say I think it's a bad idea," he says, adding, "You should give your time to people who care about you, not people who make you miserable."

Her head tilts in something resembling a nod, a wry smile curling her lips as she replies with, "Yeah. But she's my mother."

"You don't owe her for that," he tells her plainly, because he wants her to know. Wants her to hear it from someone, just in case she hasn't before.

She takes a slow bite of manicotti, chews and chews and swallows. And then she speaks again.

"After Daniel died, I saw a therapist. It was supposed to be grief counseling, but we talked about... many, many things. About her." She pauses, trades her fork for the stem of her wine glass and gives it a lazy little spin between thumb and forefinger. Robin's wine is empty, his plate, too, so he sits patiently and listens. This seems important. "He told me that the best thing I could do for myself was to walk away from my mother, and never look back. That she was toxic, and a destabilizing influence in my life."

Robin thinks he was right.

"You disagreed?"

Her lips press together, almost a smile but not quite. "I was devastated," she says, "and pregnant, and alone, and my father had invited me to come home. Walking away from her meant walking away from him, and…" She shakes her head, dark hair shifting slightly with the motion. "I could never do that. He may not be a strong man, but he is a good one, and I won't cut him out for her crimes."

"So you lived with her? With them?"

It sounds intolerable. From what little he knows of her parents - from what he's seen of her in Cora's aftermath and from that one day spent in their home - he can't imagine her choosing to go back there. Even pregnant and alone, he can't imagine her choosing that house.

But she had. "For two whole years," she confirms. "She was… better then. Oddly enough. She hated Daniel. I think she was glad when he died – she acted sympathetic, most of the time, but… Mother is never displeased when obstacles are removed from the path she has set for me. Daniel was an obstacle. So was Henry." She's told him all of this with a little smile - not a happy one, a bemused one perhaps - but it slips now. She swallows, lifts that wine again and gulps down the last of it after telling him, "She tried to convince me to give him up."

Robin's stomach sours, his already poor opinion of her mother plummeting even further. With every new thing he learns, his conscience grows lighter and lighter over having stolen from the old hag. (Not about lying to her daughter, that guilt is still fresh, but the theft itself, well… she bloody deserved it.)

"She wanted to rid herself of her own grandson?" he asks, disbelieving.

"She wanted me to be… unfettered. She wanted me to be able to get back to my life as I knew it – or rather, as she had envisioned it." Empty or not, that glass stays in her hand, her fingers toying with the stem as she speaks. "She didn't understand that nothing would ever be the same for me. Not without him. And Henry… all I had left of Daniel was an apartment full of stuff, and this baby I was carrying. We didn't even know yet that he was a boy. But that child was all I had left of him, and there was no way in hell I was going to give it up. My father knew that, right from the start, but Mother… she took longer to convince."

"That's horrifying. That she'd just… throw him away, because he was inconvenient," he spits the last word out, the way he'd like to spit at Cora Mills. How on Earth someone could willingly walk away from their child is beyond his comprehension.

"There's nothing wrong with choosing adoption," Regina insists, her brow furrowing, mouth pulling into a frown, and for a moment he thinks he's offended her. "Frankly, I've always admired women who have the strength to do that. To give up a child they know they can't take care of, or take in someone else's child and love it as your own. That's brave. But it should be a mother's choice, and no one else's." He can see her point, he hadn't meant to imply– Regina sighs, and says, "Thinking I'd be better off without him, I can understand that, but… I could never do it." Her smile spreads then, warm and maternal, the one she reserves for her son – it lights up her whole face, has his stomach flopping with affection and attraction. "He's my sweet boy."

Robin's smile chases after hers, pulled out by her warmth. "He's a good kid," he says, and then he sharpens into a smirk and informs her, "And he's been trying to make this happen since May, by the way."

Regina's eyes widen. "He–what?"

"He told me I should kiss you," Robin tells her plainly. "That night – when we ordered the pizza, and I made you eggs. While you were upstairs in the shower he snuck back down and helped me make your dinner. And told me that he thought you'd very much like to kiss me, and I should just give it a try."

"He did not."

"He did."

She lets out a laugh, short but pleased. Robin falls a little bit in love with her, and tells himself to snap out of it.

"That little sneak."

"I'm sure his heart was in the right place," he excuses lightly.

"Oh, it usually is," she sighs, and then she's sitting back in her chair, still smiling, her tongue peeking out for a moment to wet her lips. "And he was right, you know. I did want you to kiss me, and you should have just done it."

Well, then. He feels that one in his gut - has a moment of imagining what it would have been like if he had. How soft her lips would have been, how lovely she'd smelled straight from the shower. But the timing would have been all wrong, he knows that, and he tells her so.

"No, not then. It wasn't the time." Her smile mellows, but doesn't exactly dim. He thinks – hopes – it's gone from joyful to appreciative. "That wasn't… the kind of love you needed."

She looks at him for a moment, bites her lip. "Did I ever thank you for that night?"

"No need," he dismisses easily, because there truly is none. She owes him nothing for the simple fact of being kind to someone who so desperately needed a bit of kindness.

"Yes, need," she counters, and then she sobers a bit, sets her wine aside, finally. "I have friends, but not very many close ones, not many I can talk to about… Well. With a mother like her…" She shakes her head, breathes. "It's hard sometimes. Dealing with it all, alone." Her hand shifts forward across the table, fingers finding his and lacing easily, her gaze steady on his as she says, "It meant a lot to have you there. To have someone to just… listen."

"It was no trouble," he assures, his voice soft, his thumb coasting across her knuckles. "I don't need thanks for it, Regina. You were hurting, plain as day. As hard as you tried to keep it inside… it was all there."

"It was… yeah." Her fingers pulse against his, a little twitch, and then nothing. "It was all there." Her lips press together, her gaze making another loop of the table as she tells him, "I love being a mother; I wouldn't trade it for anything, not for a minute, but sometimes… When you're a single parent, sometimes it feels like you don't have permission to be a person. Y'know?" Robin squeezes her hand, her honesty squeezing at his heart, and then she murmurs, "Sometimes I'm so busy taking care of him, that…"

"There's no time left to take care of you?" he finishes, and she gives him another sad smile.

"That's not really true," she dismisses, shrugging but not releasing his hold. Her hands are soft... "There's always time. After bedtime, and before I wake him for school, or in the car on the way to work, and home again. But it can be hard to shut it off until then. To not feel whatever it is I'm feeling, and worry about homework and packing lunches, and what's for dinner, and that he's happy, and…" He could get lost in those eyes. Has, for the moment. He's listening, sure, and intently so, but he's also wrapped up in the dark chocolate color of them, in the way her emotions shift and show. They go a bit sad now, lonely. She's so wonderfully expressive. "To know that at the end of the day, when all that is done, the only person who's going to be there for you is you." He knows that feeling now, intimately. "It's been nice to have a friend close by. Even if this never becomes more than that, it's good to have a friend."

Guilt squeezes him again, vice-like and suffocating. Some friend he is.

He draws back then, eases his fingers from hers and reaches for his glass on reflex, fingers dropping lamely to the table when he remembers it's empty. Now would be an excellent time for their waiter to remember he has a job to do and come by with refills.

"You're sure you want to jeopardize that by trying to make it more?" he asks her, wishing all this was simpler. Wishing he hadn't committed that one fateful transgression all those months ago, but at the same time glad that he did, because without it, he may never have met her.

Regina meets his question with annoyance, her mouth shifting into another scowl, her eyes nearly rolling. "Robin," she says pointedly, "you've glanced at my cleavage no less than five times while we were sitting here. And I know this because over the last several months, I've learned what it looks like when you're trying to be subtle about checking me out. You're not very good at it. And despite the fact that you've tried multiple times to walk yourself back from dating me, here we are." She reaches toward him again, but halts herself before contact, her expression softening as she tells him, "We don't have to try to make this more. It's doing that just fine on its own."

It is, and that's the problem – the ease with which they've just slid into this… relationship. All while he harbors secrets.

"Do you think that's what's best?" he asks her, but it's a pointless question, just running them in more sodding circles, because how she can she possibly answer that, not knowing what he knows?

"Why are you running from this?" she questions softly, with a shake of her head. "You clearly want it. I clearly want it. I don't understand what the problem is here." This time when she reaches for him, she doesn't stop until their fingers are linked again, hers squeezing against his as she says, "Help me understand. Because you're hot and then cold, you flirt and then you close up, and I... I don't know what's in the way of this."

Now's the time to tell her. When she's sitting here, open and seeking, when she's bloody asking him to tell her what the problem is, what it is she doesn't know. Now is the time to tell her. And he opens his mouth, for a whole second he intends to tell her right then, consequences be damned. He cannot go another minute with her not knowing. But the words stick in his throat, and he cannot stop looking at her, momentarily dumbstruck as he fights between the urge to be honest and the urge to keep things as they are. Good. Open. Flirtatious and kind.

He likes her. So very, very much, he likes this woman, and he's loathe to hurt her. They could be good together, this could work, if only he hadn't throttled it before it even began. And she's no idea, she's none the wiser, and he tells himself again that she wouldn't have to be. That he could just keep his transgression to himself, and she'd never have to be hurt by it. Her parents have clearly moved on, and he's tried so hard to as well. Tried to pick up his life and make right again the things he'd made wrong. She's seen that, she knows that. She knows how hard he's tried, and maybe if he tells her, she'll understand. Maybe she'll see his actions for what they were – the rash choices of a desperate man. She knows he's a criminal, and she wants him anyway. Should it matter if the crime he committed was against her family?

He's not going to tell her, he decides. Not now, anyway. Not here. Not in the middle of a crowded restaurant, in the middle of a date. He thinks – it's possible – it might be – that he could tell her and not ruin whatever is growing between them, but he cannot be sure. And if he's wrong, if he tells her and she turns on him, turns him in… he can't risk that. He cannot risk jail, he cannot risk being sent back to England, he cannot risk relying on Marian's grace and willingness to cross an ocean in order to see his son. Not even for honesty, not even for her. He'll keep this to himself for now, until he can tell her in private. Until they're somewhere that they can shout and reason and plead if necessary.

So he shakes his head, and tells her only, "I'm afraid I'm going to cause you pain." He's not afraid of it, he knows it, but it's the best he can do under the circumstances.

"I'm sure you will," she tells him easily, and oh if only she knew. "Pain is a byproduct of love, in my experience." Her face falls then, cheeks flushing lightly as she stammers, "Not that this is – I didn't mean – I'm not in love with you."

It's just what he needs, that moment of adorable awkwardness from her to break this spell of self-loathing and spiraling guilt he's been trapped under. He grins, chuckles lightly, and assures her, "I know what you meant, babe."

Her lips curve before she presses them together, continuing, "I'm just saying that people hurt people they care about. It happens. I'm not sitting at this table because I think you'll never cause me pain, Robin."

"Why are you here?" he asks her, curious suddenly what it is exactly that she sees in him. "The day you met me, I was a stinking drunk, who broke into your home and puked in your powder room. How did I manage to get from there to a date?"

Regina laughs, a light thing, one that makes her whole face a little brighter for a second, and then she says, "I guess I just have a soft spot for messes. And I've told you before - you're more than that man. I've seen how hard you try for the things you care about, for your son. For mine. You have a good heart, and you see me, really see me. And what can I say?" Her smile goes wry and her nose scrunches adorably as she finishes, "I'm a sucker for dimples."

"You're quite the woman, Regina Mills," he tells her, with every bit of fondness he can muster. Because she is, and he is so, so very undeserving of her. She's open and honest and wonderful, and he is a fraud. A liar. A thief. He barely deserves to breathe her air right now, much less to flirt and smile and take her to the sodding movies. She bites her lip and shakes her head, brushes off the compliment and he has to bite back the urge to repeat himself. To insist that she's something wonderful, whether she sees it or not.

But then she's looking around and saying, "If this waiter doesn't suddenly remember we exist, we're going to miss the start of our movie," and the moment is over.

It's five more minutes before the tosser even shows his face, but they make it to the movies with just enough time for a piss and some popcorn, settling into their seats just as the previews are ending.

**.::.**

They sit in the movie theater, arm to arm in the dark, close enough that she can smell his cologne, can feel the warmth of his bare forearm against her own. He got popcorn – just a small one, for him. She'd said she wasn't hungry after dinner – and it had been the truth – but nevertheless, she finds herself reaching over now and then to steal a kernel or two. Popcorn is a weakness.

The movie is good, but not great - enough to hold her interest, at least until halfway through when Robin turns his head, nuzzling into her hair until he can whisper in her ear, "You smell amazing."

The soft brush of his breath has goosebumps flaring down her neck, and her lips curve automatically before she presses them together, a fluttery little flare of giddiness that she thinks she's far too old for kicking up in her chest. Regina turns her head slightly, enough to murmur back, "You, too."

She hears him chuckle softly and then pull back, just a little, and her chin follows, her head turning like he's drawn it on a string. They're face to face, then, and he looks almost blue in the flickering light of the movie. His eyes are dark, but she can still see them, can see the way they're wandering across her face as the screen brightens for a moment.

God, he's attractive.

She needs to kiss him.  _Needs_  to. Maybe not now, but soon. Tonight. Before they part ways, she is going to kiss this man and kiss him well. Maybe it will cure him of this infuriating flip-flopping he's been doing.

The thought has her tongue peeking out to wet her lips, and his gaze drops down to watch. And stays there.

 _Oh_.

Regina breathes in, breathes out, swallows. Watches indecision flicker across his face, and she'll be damned if this man will talk himself out of what he clearly wants the same way he nearly talked himself out of this date in the first place. Not if she has anything to say about it – and she does. She most definitely does. Regina is not a woman who waits by passively while others make all her life choices for her, and he is taking his damn sweet time. And for the most ridiculous reasons. Fear. Uncertainty. Self-doubt.

But Regina isn't afraid of this, of them, and she's damn well certain about what she wants in this precise moment.

So she leans in, closes the four inches between them and presses her lips softly to his.

**.::.**

Well, this is an absolutely horrible idea, he thinks as his heart knocks hard inside his chest.

Kissing her. Their lips pressing gently, nothing too risque, certainly nothing like the teenagers snogging enthusiastically three rows in front of them. But now that they've started, he doesn't want to stop. Her lips are warm and soft, and when he presses into her, she sighs gently, lips parting as she melts against him just slightly. For a moment, they hover that way, mouths just barely open, lips ghosting together. God, he should not be kissing her, he should  _not_  be kissing her. He should tell her his truth before he goes about kissing her.

But then he is, he is kissing her. He lets out a little groan of surrender and sucks that full lower lip between his own, feeling something stir low down when she moans quietly. Not enough that anyone else would hear, but enough that  _he_  can, and God, he wants her to make that sound again. And again, and again, and again, louder, enthusiastic. Fuck.  _Fuck_.

He needs to stop this.

Needs to stop kissing her.

Now.

She tastes like salt, like cinema popcorn, and when her tongue flicks lightly against his lip, he opens for her automatically, adding the chemical sweetness of the Diet Coke she's been sipping to the intoxicating mix. When her head tilts just so, and his adjusts to mirror it, and the kiss deepens, has tongues pressing and sliding, he's a goner.

That's it. He's lost. He's lost to her, and this will surely end badly for all involved, but he's powerless against her. Cannot, under any circumstances, stop the hand that rises to tangle in her hair, threading into short locks, his fingertips dragging along her scalp until she shivers, and Christ, that shouldn't have been as sexy as it was, but it  _is_  sexy, and this was a horrible idea, he wants her desperately now. There is no way he will confess to her at the end of this date, not if there's a chance he could spend another minute, hour, whatever she might grant him, all tangled up with her.

The kiss heats and heats, his fingers fisting loosely in her hair as he shifts his body until he doesn't have to crane his neck quite so much to reach her.

Of course he's forgotten entirely about the popcorn in his lap, and he jostles it, nearly upends the whole thing – would have if she hadn't shot her hand out to catch it, the bag crinkling noisily in her grip as their lips part with a soft smack.

They lock eyes, both momentarily a bit gobsmacked, and then she smiles. A slow-building thing that sucker-punches him right in the gut with how beautiful it is.

That smile goes impish, and she snickers quietly, tugging the popcorn into her own lap and settling back against her seat, stealing a glance at him with an expression that looks very much like the cat that got the cream. She licks those lips again, and he's actually jealous of her –  _he_  wants to be the one running his tongue along them.

But this is better, this is wiser, so he shuffles a little in his seat and lifts his arm up to stretch along her shoulders.

Her head settles against his shoulder, the scent of her hair wafting under his nose (that's what started all this in the bloody first place, he thinks), but he resists the urge to drop his nose into it again. Resists the urge to do anything more than let his fingers skim along the bare skin of her arm, cool under his warm touch.

He tries to focus on the film, but it's bloody pointless.

All he can think about now is kissing her.

**.::.**

Regina has no idea what happens for the rest of the movie.

She knows that Robin ended up with his lap half covered in popcorn before she managed to catch the bag, and knows he spends the next five minutes eating kernels off his jeans to clean it up. She knows that his arm is steady and warm against her, that his fingers tickle pleasantly as he strokes them in swirling whorls over her bicep. And she knows that she is wet, ridiculously so, from just a few relatively innocent kisses and that endless, eternal spiraling touch against her arm.

What is it about this man, she wonders, that has her so riled up so quickly?

Maybe it's just that she's coming off a dry spell. Maybe it's the accent, the dimples, the – oh, who cares? It doesn't matter what  _it_  is, just that it's there, that low-down itch begging to be scratched. The one that has her distracted with the desire to get him alone, to kiss him again, to fool around like a couple of horny teenagers. She's not the first-date-sex type, not really (but oh, how she wishes she was right now), but that doesn't mean they can't end up breathless and disheveled.

If they don't do something to break the sexual tension that's been percolating between them, she's going to explode.

And it's just that thought that has her sitting in his car for a moment longer than she needs to when they pull up behind his house. She glances at the clock, shifts her grip on the roses he'd given her, and thanks her lucky stars that she had the good sense to fall for the neighbor, because it means she can milk every last minute of Mary Margaret's time for herself.

"I have the sitter for another half hour," she tells him after they've been sitting in silence for a good twenty seconds after he kills the ignition, neither quite willing to leave, it seems. "Maybe we could go to your place for a cup of coffee?"

His smile grows and then it wavers, that same maddening something flickering across his face as it has over and over again all evening, and she swears, if he tries to give her some lame excuse for why they shouldn't–

"Sure," he tells her, and thank God. "I'd like that." He unclips his seatbelt, and tells her, "Now stay put for a moment, so I can come open your door like a proper gentleman."

Regina chuckles, shaking her head and unbuckling as well. She gives him until he's out of the car and nearly around the hood before she pops the door open herself and steps out. Robin catches up just as she shuts the door, giving her a look of amused frustration. "Sorry," she shrugs. "I'm an impatient woman."

"Well, then let's not keep Your Majesty waiting any longer," he taunts, gesturing her toward the back door. Regina smirks and steps around him, climbing the stairs and sniffing the sweet scent of her roses as Robin's keys jingle behind her. She steps aside so he can unlock the door, then follows him inside. It doesn't escape her notice that the house is completely dark, Robin flipping on the light in the back hallway, and then again in the kitchen. They're alone.

Regina swallows and feels her anticipatory arousal kick up a notch. If she doesn't reign herself in, she's going to climb this man like a tree, and that would just be… embarrassing.

So instead she sets her flowers on the countertop, shoves her hands into her pockets and watches as Robin pulls a bag of coffee grounds out of the cupboard, telling her semi-reluctantly, "We don't have any decaf. So I hope this won't keep you up half the night."

Regina shrugs, reminds him that it's a Friday, and she's not the one who has to be up early to pick up a preschooler. He dumps a few scoops of generic grocery-store dark roast into the filter, snaps it shut and sets it to brew.

"It should just be a few minutes," he tells her, and she nods, glances around. What to do until then?

Robin's turned away from her again, is reaching up into the cabinets for a pair of mugs, and she takes a moment to shamelessly admire his backside as he does. Why are they even bothering with coffee? Robin turns back around in time to catch her staring, her head cocked obviously to one side. His brows lift, amusement coloring his face, and Regina just shrugs. Yes, she'd been looking, her expression says, and what of it?

"Careful, Miss Mills," he warns. "You keep looking at me like that, and we'll have to stop pretending we're going to drink any coffee."

Regina grins. Well, at least they're on the same page then. And if they are, then what in the hell are they doing with their lips not touching?

"Kiss me," she tells him, and oh boy, does he.

**.::.**

Sod it all.

That's what he's decided.

The whole thing – what he's done – sod it all and who cares, because Regina is in his kitchen asking him to kiss her and he is sure as shit not going to refuse her. Not now that he's gotten a little taste, and not after all this time wondering about exactly this. No, he's going to kiss her breathless – is presently doing just that, with her back pressed up against the countertop and her front pressed up against his – and then devour her whole if he gets his bloody way. He won't have sex with her – he should be honest with her before they do  _that_  at least – but he'll do pretty much anything else she lets him, he decides. If it makes him a horrible person, well, he's not the first man to have made poor life choices when faced with a beautiful and willing woman, and he surely won't be the last.

So for now, he decides not to care about anything other than the warm, eager, wonderful woman who is at just this moment running her hands down to squeeze the very arse he'd just caught her checking out (a nice boost to the ego, that). Robin chuckles into her mouth, and she grins, their kiss falling apart at the seams, split open by their mirth, and now they're just grinning against each other's mouths, his heart thumping hard at the reality of having her in his arms, in his hands. Of being in hers. But he's loathe to stop kissing her for even a moment, loathe to have anything impeding his plans to snog her good and proper, and since she's made it quite clear that wandering hands will be a feature in this little escapade, Robin has no guilt in reaching down and scooping her up under the rear, enjoying the little squeak of surprise she lets out as he does. She kisses him again as he walks them blindly toward the living room, one hand slapping out against the wall to flip the light on (he's going to want to be able to see her properly, thank you very much), and then he drops her onto the couch, her hands tugging him down after her as she laughs breathlessly.

And then he's the one kissing  _her_ , his body pressing hers down into the leather of John's couch, and she seems so slight beneath him, smaller than he'd thought she was, even as close as he's been to her before. He's never been  _this_  close, and the part of his brain that can still function on higher levels is thinking that her personality must make her seem bigger than she is. She wriggles slightly beneath him, but only as much as it takes to part her thighs around his hips, his half-mast erection pressing right up against the seam of her jeans by the time she's finished. She lets out a warm, satisfied moan and Robin hardens even further, grinding lightly against her.

"S'good?" he manages between kisses, and she hums and nods and grinds up against him, and, well, it's good to know he's not the only one who's been terribly horny about this whole thing for a while now. Whatever twinges of guilt he may have felt about the sheer number of times he'd pulled off to the thought of her since March leave him immediately when she hooks an ankle around his leg and presses against him harder.

His mouth finds her neck, then, sucking warmly just below her jaw, and then letting his tongue trail down her pulse lazily, and back up. She smells bloody amazing, her perfume, her hair, he could drown right here in the scent of her and die a happy man. And the noise she makes is breathy and high, has him grinning at the knowledge he's so quickly found something she likes.

"No marks," she gasps as he starts to retrace his path with a line of sucking kisses. Robin nods, presses his lips to her skin, and gentles his mouth against her. No marks, nothing hard enough to leave a hickey, but enough to have her turning her head to give him better access, clutching at his shirt with one fisted hand. She lets out a choked little  _God_  when he sucks a little harder at the join of her neck and shoulder, moaning again when Robin answers with a slow, firm grind of his hips into hers, the friction bloody wonderful. Everything about her is, God, why did they wait so long to do this? (Right. Because he stole from her parents, he remembers with a twinge of guilt that is swiftly pushed down in favor of sampling the salty taste of the skin along her collarbone. He'll feel guilty later, right now he's focused on feeling  _her._ )

Robin's had his elbows planted on either side of her, holding his weight, but now he shifts slightly, until he can slide one hand to her rib, stroking down her side and then back up, daring to run his hand all the way up until he can cup one of her tits. Her breath whooshes out against his ear, and Robin lets out a low moan of his own at the feel of her, soft and yielding beneath silk and lace, arching into him without hesitation. He wants her, all of her, every single inch but especially this part right here. Wants to kiss and lick and suck and make her writhe, wants to hear her pleasure, wants to– He gets carried away in his own mind for a moment, fantasizing about her even as he's with her, and tucks his face against her neck with a groan and an eager grind against her hips.

"We're," she breathes, and then for half a second she says nothing, just loops her arm around his neck and turns her head back toward him, her chin brushing his cheek before her fingers grasp gently at his hair and tug. Robin lifts his head to look down at her (her lipstick is smudged, her eyes dark and heated, and he's stone hard against her now), watches her lick her lips and then tell him, "We're not having sex tonight."

"Alright," he pants, simple as that, grateful for her putting the brakes on him even if he'd already told himself he wouldn't take her to bed until he's told her everything. With her right here beneath him, her mouth that still tastes vaguely of salt and sweet but increasingly of them, and her soft sounds, warm hands, he could have easily thrown that promise to himself out the window right along with the earlier one that had him telling her all before he bid her goodnight. So this is good, knowing her boundaries is good. It helps him rein in his excitement, helps him leash his baser urges and focus on the here and now.

Here and now, she's smiling and using that grip on his hair to draw his mouth back down to hers. The kiss is slow, and wet, tongues sliding and teasing, her hand skimming from his hair down his back, joining the other and coasting lower, lower, one tugging at the back of his shirt until she can find skin underneath, the other continuing down to grasp his arse again. She squeezes and he rocks against her; her grip relaxes and he does, too. He can feel her smile against his mouth, and then she nips lightly at his lower lip, holds for a second until he huffs out a breath. For a few long minutes, they stay just like this, languid, hot kisses and her hand guiding him against her in a lazy rhythm. He draws his hand back down, uses it to creep beneath silk and cotton, exploring the soft skin of her side, her ribs, beneath her blouse. When she shivers and arches, he lets it creep beneath her, unintentionally trapping himself between her back and the sofa but not terribly bothered by the turn of events.

He cannot think of a single thing he'd rather be doing than this, cannot think of a single better end to his day than finally – bloody  _finally_  – getting to kiss this woman, getting to hear the tiny moans in the back of her throat when he rubs his cock up against her, or discover to his utter lack of surprise that she's by no means shy or docile when it comes to sex. He may have regrets tomorrow, but he's dead certain not a one of them will be with anything he's doing with her now.

**.::.**

Regina is throbbing.

Warm all over (but certain places in particular), her nerve endings on high alert, sensitive to every rasp of his beard against her skin, to every firm, slow drag of his cock (hard, he's so hard against her, and it has her wanting to throw that whole no-sex thing out the window, has her wanting to  _feel_  him, to let him give her a good rattling right here on this sofa, manners and modesty be damned, but she won't, she  _won't_ , not yet…). If she thought she was wet  _before_ , it's nothing compared to now, when every grind of her hips against his has her underwear slipping deliciously between her slick skin and her jeans, the seam of which are doing absolutely sinful, delicious things against her clit.

She should have asked him out sooner, should have just bit the bullet and planted one on him weeks ago (should have realized sooner that she wanted to), because if she had, she could have –  _oh_  – had his mouth on her throat again just like it is now. His tongue trailing, swirling, raising goosebumps in his wake, his beard tickling, the combined sensation drawing out some almost embarrassing whimpers of enjoyment as she grips his ass (he has a great ass, she's decided, one she hasn't spent nearly enough time appreciating), and he pushes hard against her in response (thank God for a man who takes direction well).

It pops a moan up out of her mouth, a rather unladylike  _mmnahh…_  and when he chuckles against her (that bastard) she shivers at the way his breath hits the damp trails his tongue has left on her skin. God, she's wet, hot, needs him, needs  _more_ , she feels delightfully greedy with the need to take and take and feel more, feel better, feel everything. It's been far, far too long since she's been with anyone like this.

His fingers press against her back, she can feel each fingertip dig lightly into the muscles around her spine and then he's worming his hand from beneath her and she realizes he'd been sort of stuck there. Oops. She lifts her back slightly, as much she she can with his torso against hers, and he gives his hand a little shake as they share a soft chuckle.

"Sorry," she smirks, but he shakes his head, shifts his weight slightly until more of it is on his elbow, until he can reach her belly, her breasts again, watching himself take her in hand and knead. His gaze is heated, hungry, has her heart beating harder under his hand. She'd always known he was attractive, but good  _God_ , she hadn't known he could look like  _this._

"You don't have to apologize for a bloody thing right now," he assures her, his voice low and sexy and  _doing things_  to her. "Can this come off?" He asks, fingers tugging at the silk of her top. And yes, oh yes, it can. She nods and up it goes, a little shimmy letting him pull it over her head and off. It disappears onto the floor somewhere, leaves her in just her camisole, which he'd done a bang-up job of rucking halfway up her belly earlier. Robin's head dips down immediately, pressing kisses from her collar to the lace edge of her camisole, his hands sliding up her torso to cup and squeeze again. "These have been driving me crazy all evening," he murmurs to her, and Regina laughs softly.

"I know."

"Tease," he accuses, and she sighs, gasps as his teeth nip gently at her skin. She can't say he's wrong.

"I like the way you look at me," she breathes. "Like that you can't help it. It makes me feel... so sexy. Beautiful."

"You are sexy," he tells her, lifting his head to steal a kiss from her lips. "And bloody gorgeous." One fingertip runs along the edge of her camisole, a teasing, tickling trail, and then he continues, "And if it's alright…" He trails off, but that trailing finger hooks beneath lace and edges it half an inch sideways, baring a hint of skin.

Regina nods, tells him to go ahead and then sinks her teeth into her lower lip as she watches him duck his head back down, drawing her camisole and the thin bra beneath it to the side in one slow movement. His breath shudders out against her, and she moans at how turned on  _he_  is, then feels her cheeks heat with embarrassment because it's not as though he'd even touched her. Oh, but he's touching her now, dotting feather-light kisses from her sternum toward her nipple, and Regina swallows heavily, tightens her thighs slightly around his hips. He's scooted down just a little bit for better access, and it's a shame, that, because it means she's not lined up with his cock anymore.

Something she's less and less concerned about, the closer he gets to his target, and then his mouth is on her, warm and wet against her pebbled nipple, his tongue swirling, and it feels… nice, she supposes. Pleasant, but… "Harder," she whispers, her hand lifting to twine in his hair again now that his ass isn't comfortably in reach. He gives her a little suck, but it's still gentle. Light. Not terribly useful. Her fingers trail down toward his chin, tipping it forward until he looks up at her face.

And then she regrets it briefly, a little flicker of self-consciousness flaring when she has to admit, "I'm, um. I'm not terribly sensitive there. Gentle doesn't do much for me."

"Oh," he says, turning his head to press a kiss to the pad of her thumb and then ducking his head back down and–

"Mm!" He sucks hard at her, has heat flaring out through her, and yes, oh, that's so much better. She can feel him smile, and then he sucks at her again, his tongue flicking, and then his teeth scrape and she's moaning and grasping at his shoulders, and that's, yes, that's… that's good, that's so,  _so_ good...

**.::.**

He's so hard he's starting to ache with it, a bit starved for attention at the moment with the way they're situated, but he can't say he minds, not when she's coming alive for him, gasping and digging her nails into his shoulders (they're starting to ache from holding himself up for so long, but he doesn't dare move quite yet). Her tits are gorgeous, perfect handfuls with dark pink nipples that may not be too terribly sensitive to a lighter hand, but with a rougher touch, a little bite and nibble, they have her writhing beneath him and it's the hottest fucking thing he's seen in a good long while.

He tugs at the lace covering her other breast and nips his way across to suck her in hard. He's not used to quite this much force, Marian had been sensitive, but he rather likes  _this_ , likes to take her a bit more fiercely, it makes the whole thing feel even more heated, even more riled up. Not that they're not plenty riled already, but he's devouring her, sucking her in through his teeth and listening to her pant and whimper, his name falling from her lips and going straight to his cock.

Fuck, how is he ever supposed to give this up? Give her up? She has to understand what he did, why he did it, she  _has_  to, because a future without Regina's tits in his palms, under his lips, is a future he quite frankly doesn't want to see.

He presses his brow to her collar for a moment, pauses and breathes, and curses himself for the millionth time for having put this obstacle in their path unknowingly.

"What is it?" she pants, her fingers rubbing gently at the back of his neck, and Robin squeezes his eyes shut, presses a kiss into the dip of her shoulder and lies to her.

"My shoulders are killing me."

It's another half-truth, but it works. Her hands move to his shoulders and squeeze, and then she's urging, "Switch," and so they do. He pulls back from her as she scoots herself up until she's sitting and moves to straddle him, his palms coasting over her thighs as he lays back. But she grasps his shirt for a second, says, "Wait," and tugs him back up, yanks his shirt off. Robin flops back to the leather, warm from her skin, and grins. It goes cheeky when he watches her give him a slow, very approving perusal, her fingertips tracing a line down from his pecs across his abs. He's had plenty of time to stay in shape these last few months, and he's glad to finally have someone who can appreciate it. "We should've done this sooner," she tells him, and then she's leaning forward, planting her hands on the arm of the sofa and kissing him once.

Their noses bump as he nods, tells her, "Definitely," and then he's drawing his hands over her back, frowning at the way all their shifting has managed to half-cover her again. He strokes up her shoulders, gives the straps of her camisole a little tug and then urges, "Sit up, babe." When she complies, he tugs her top down to her waist, frees her arms of it, and deftly unhooks the flimsy underwire she'd been wearing beneath it, tossing it away. Her tits look even better like this, with her on top, and he takes them in his hands, both of them, cupping and grasping at her nipples, rolling them firmly in tandem. Regina's lashes flutter shut, her jaw trembling, and he becomes keenly aware of the way they're once again lined up at the groin when she begins to rock against him.

He squeezes and rolls again, and she gasps, nods, her cheeks all flushed, her tongue swiping out against her lip. "Like that," she breathes, and it's unbearably sexy, she's unbearably sexy, he wants to strip her down to nothing and pound her into this sofa, find out what other wonderful noises he'd draw out of her if he did  _that_.

But that's not in the cards for them tonight, she's already told him that, so instead he lifts his head up, slides one hand around her back to urge her forward again (she goes, palms hitting the arm again with a soft thunk, his hand still on her tit even fuller now that she's pitched forward), and catches a nipple in his lips. He sucks and he squeezes and she  _Oh!_ s and starts to ride the bulge in his jeans, hissing a soft  _Yesss_ … She  _Ah_ s and  _Mmm_ s and grips the leather so hard it squeaks, picking up her pace against his cock (if it chafes a little, he ignores it, he'll dry-hump her to an orgasm even if it rubs him raw).

Her throaty  _Fuck_  has him moaning against her soft skin (so soft, she's so bloody soft against his tongue, his nose), and she's starting to smell just a little bit like lavender and sweat, they're both heating up, and fuck, he wants her,  _wants_ her, gives her a little bite that has her squeaking and stiffening (too much, he thinks, licking to soothe the ache) and– Is that the door?

Robin pulls away from her, gripping her hips with both hands now to still them, craning his head around her in an impossible attempt to see all the way to the back.

He cuts off her bewildered "Wha-?" with a hiss of "John," and then it's a scramble to tug her top back up from where it's banded around her waist, to find wherever it is she'd flung his, to disentangle until they're sitting innocently, trying their best to look like they weren't halfway to fucking on the sofa.

It's a bit of a pipe dream, they're both flushed, Robin has a rager of a stiffy and Regina's blouse is on the floor, her bra artfully draped across the coffee table. She realizes it with a widening of her eyes that would be funny if they couldn't hear John stepping into the kitchen, calling Robin's name, and then darts forward to grab the scrap of black lace, sitting back and stuffing it into the sofa between them just in time for John to walk into the living room and stop dead at the sight of them.

"Evening," Robin greets his roommate, and John looks from him to Regina, back again, down to the puddle of red silk on the floor and up.

Then he shakes his head, mutters, "For fucks sake. I'm going upstairs," and stalks past them, headed for the steps on the other side of the wall.

**.::.**

They hold it together, completely silent until John climbs every single one of the steps (Regina counts the footfalls one by one, the same number of steps as she has – even a single creaky one to match), and then the snickering starts.

It's ridiculous, the situation they've just found themselves in. Walked in on and scolded like a couple of randy teenagers getting caught by their parents, and how pitifully they tried to look like they were doing anything other than what they actually were. Surely they hadn't looked guilty in the  _slightest_.

Regina leans into Robin as the snickering turns into outright laughter, their shoulders shaking together. His lips press into her temple, his breath a warm stutter against her hairline.

"Well, that killed the mood a little," she mutters lightly, and Robin reaches down, draws one of her knees across his and skims the tip of his nose along the shell of her ear. It tickles, draws a shiver out of her.

"I may never forgive him for that one," he chuckles, and Regina finds herself grinning, her eyes catching on the clock on the DVR. She's late. Damnit.

Air leaves her in a heavy sigh, and she scoots away a little and tells him reluctantly, "As much as I was enjoying myself, I should go relieve the sitter."

Robin pouts gamely, then leans in and takes her mouth in a lazy, warm kiss, his fingers rising up to weave into her hair. It feels too good to resist, so she doesn't, sinking into his mouth one last time and letting him kiss her as long as he likes.

He's not greedy (she's can't decide if she's disappointed by that), only takes another minute of her time, lips brushing, tongues teasing, noses bumping, and then he exhales and rests his brow against hers. His fingertips scrape against the nape of her neck, back and forth, back and forth, and he tells her, "I had a really great time tonight."

Her lips twitch and then curve, and her voice is quiet, just between them, when she replies, "So did I. We'll do it again?"

He nods, their pressed foreheads drawing her into the action with him, and then he steals one last kiss and asks if she wants him to walk her home.

Regina bends down for her blouse and shakes her head. "I'll be fine. And I still don't want Henry to know about this. Just in case." She tugs her top on, turns and flushes a little when she finds him holding her bra out. Right. Don't want to forget that….

She shoves it into her pocket (it sticks out, she'll have to move it to her purse to risk revealing just how much of a brazen hussy she's been to Mary Margaret – not that she's ashamed of it, not one bit. Her only regret is not having John walk in five minutes later, so they could have done something about the ache still making itself known between her thighs).

"I won't say anything," he assures.

"And you'll keep your hands to yourself on Monday?" she questions with a lift of her brow.

Robin grins.

"I'll surely try," he tells her and she's not sure if she believes him, shaking her head and giving him a playful glare.

And then, because she's feeling bold, and flirty, and because she can, she lets one hand drop down to the erection that hasn't quite abated yet, giving it a little rub before whispering, "Think of me," and giving him a saucy wink.

He laughs – and good, she'd meant for him to – slumping back into the couch as she rises and heads for the kitchen, for her purse and the roses.

"I usually do," he retorts and she stops, turns, grins.

"Well played."

"Mm." He's standing, following, adjusting her strap slightly when he catches up to her and she's already slung her purse across her shoulder and grasped her flowers. "Do you want your coffee to go?" he asks, nodding toward the full, untouched pot.

"I think I'm good," she assures him, grinning and feeling ridiculously fluttery. God, she likes him. Really, really likes him. It swells up in her as she looks at him, lips smeared vaguely with red, hair disheveled (how they ever thought they could feign innocence, she has no idea), blue eyes glinting with humor.

Robin walks her to the door (kisses her against it for a good fifteen seconds before they can bear to open it and send her out into the night), and then she's headed home.

Mary Margaret gives her a once-over when she walks in, brows rising up, up, up.

"Sorry I'm late," Regina tells her, and the younger woman just shakes her head and smiles.

"We all have to get ours when we can," Mary Margaret teases and Regina laughs, pulls out a few bills more than their usual and hands them over.

"Hush money," she tells her. "Not a word to Henry when he inevitably pesters your for details on Monday."

"I saw nothing," the other brunette confirms, gathering her things and leaving.

Regina kills all the main floor lights, sets the alarm, and climbs the stairs. She heads for her bedroom first, toeing off her pumps, flopping back onto her bed and grinning.

That was one hell of a date.

**.::.**

Robin does think of her. Shuts himself in his bedroom, squirts a pump of lotion into his hand and thinks of her tits, her lips, the way she sounds and smells and every new and lovely thing he'd discovered about her tonight. It doesn't take long until he's coming into his palm, and not much after that he's wandering back downstairs for a cup of water and finding his roommate in the kitchen.

John gives him a once-over and then asks, "Did you tell her?"

Robin pauses, one hand already tugging the cabinet open. He stares at a cup there, a big plastic Baltimore Orioles souvenir cup that has a twin in Marian's apartment, and then he sighs, admits, "No."

"Robin-"

"I know, mate," he interrupts. "I know. I will."

"Soon."

"Yeah," he agrees shortly, the high of the evening plummeting at warp speed as he draws the cup down and yanks on the tap. "I know."

He can't do this again. Can't be with her again, not like he was tonight.

Not until he tells her the truth.


	16. Chapter 16

Friday night floats her through the weekend, has her making waffles and eggs for Henry (who is still trying to badger the identity of her mystery suitor out of her, even more so now that she's so damn cheerful), and pouring an extra splash of cream into her coffee on Monday morning. She cannot stop smiling. She keeps telling herself that she needs to, that she's acting like a silly schoolgirl instead of the mature, adult woman that she is, but every time she thinks of him, of his hands, his lips, the feel of him between her thighs, she gets twin flushes of sensation – a fluttery feeling in her chest and a low-down warmth in her belly. She finds herself counting down the hours until she can kick Henry upstairs to work on his reading chat after his lesson tonight, and have Robin all to herself again for a few minutes. It's been a long, long time since she's felt this way, and Regina is torn between nursing it indulgently and trying to rein in the hormones on parade.

"Someone got fucked."

There's a clatter of metal on wood laminate as Sidney drops his spoon and Regina attempts to shoot a glare at Mal for her comment, but the way she can feel her lips quirking up at the corners probably takes most of the punch out of it.

"Someone did not," she corrects, Sidney's little whoosh of an exhale from a foot and a half away making her feel just a little bit bad for him as she catches him bending down to grab his spoon in her periphery. He's handled her relationships well over the years - well, there'd really only been Graham, but still. He'd expressed concern numerous times over the risks of dating a police officer, over whether such connections might put her at risk of danger, put her in the crossfire of some vengeful criminal who wanted retribution against the officer who'd wronged him, but aside from his concerns for her safety (she'd reminded him again and again that this wasn't some TV cop drama, and that she was in no danger), he'd kept his jealousy fairly under wraps. And because he's a decent guy with a harmless, but ardent, crush on her, she's always tried not to go into terrible detail about her romantic exploits in his presence. It's a little personal rule of hers.

One that Mal seems determined to have her break today.

"Mmhmm," the blonde drawls, stirring her coffee in slow circles that make Regina think inexplicably of sex (although to be fair, Robin's kicked her hormones into overdrive, and a good number of innocent things have her mind slipping toward the gutter the last few days - the hum of the dryer as she ran a load of laundry, the kitchen table she'd briefly imagined him bending her over, the soft tickle of soap bubbles coasting down her belly in the shower this morning...). "Sure you didn't. You're just all smug and smiley because you have, what? A flourishing tomato plant?"

"I do have one of those, actually," Regina clips back at her, leaning against the break room counter and sipping her own coffee. Sidney has moved to the table and begun staring avidly at a Sudoku puzzle in the paper, but Regina is fairly certain he's listening to every word. She wishes he'd leave, for his own sake, because she's about to tell Mal, "But I did have a date this weekend, if you must stick your nose in my business."

"When it has you looking like you're still imagining his cock, yes, I must," Mall tells her bluntly, one eyebrow raised in her direction.

Regina's cheeks feel suddenly hot, and she hopes and prays there's not an actual blush to accompany the feeling, because, yes, she has been imagining just that. But that's nobody's business but her own, thankyouverymuch, and so she schools her expression carefully into something resembling casual disinterest and gives Mal a once-over as she tries to come up with a response.

A dry, "Classy," is the best she can manage, and then she's adding. "There was no sex. It was a first date."

"Those two things are not mutually exclusive," Mallory points out.

Regina swallows a generous gulp of coffee, and informs her primly, "They are for me. Now if you'll excuse me, I have work to do. This morning's installment of Let's Badger Regina About Her Personal Life is over."

She exits – saunters, really, her hips swinging as her heels clack against the office flooring – and carries her coffee all the way back to her desk. She'll take the rest of her break there.

But when Kathryn ducks her head in two minutes later with a single-worded question ("Date?"), and a look of untamed curiosity, Regina waves her in with an eye roll she just barely means and urges, "Shut the door."

She'll leave out some of the more salacious details, but a little post-date rhapsodizing for a friend whose own relationship is a bit murky seems like the least she can do.

**.::.**

He's going to tell her tonight.

He's decided it. He's going to spend an hour teaching Henry how to play the guitar, and then they'll share a meal, and then the boy will be sent off to do his homework and he and Regina will clean up a bit and then he will tell her. Immediately. Right then.

He will clear the air between them, let her choose whether or not to be with him when she has all the facts, and beg, plead and grovel if he has to in order to ensure she doesn't go to the police. It's a risk, a massive one for him, but he's spent the weekend all in knots about the whole thing, and John is right. He owes her better than lies and deceit, even if such things are easier. And the longer he lets this go on, the more he really will hurt her.

So he'll tell her tonight, first chance he gets with her alone.

Except when he arrives, she's still in her work clothes – usually is, this is nothing new, but today her work clothes are a snug black dress with a neckline that scoops low enough to bare a hint of cleavage, a slim belt around her middle. She's the one who opens the door for him instead of Henry, and she smells of that perfume that had stuck pleasantly in his nose all weekend, phantom wafts of it assaulting him with memories of soft skin and hot kisses. Her greeting is a flirtatious smile and soft, "Hi," and she gives a glance over her shoulder and then steps out onto the porch with him, whispering a furtive, "Kiss me before he comes downstairs," and who is Robin to disobey?

He almost begs off, because surely Henry will know if he comes back inside sporting a smear of her lipstick, but he realizes then that she's not wearing any, and bloody hell, she planned for this.

Then he thinks to himself that if he's about to ruin everything, he might as well get one last kiss to remember her by, and he swoops in, cups a hand behind her neck and crushes his mouth to hers. She lets out a little  _Mm!_  of pleased surprise, one arm wrapping around his neck as her mouth opens under his, tongues teasing lightly (she tastes like red wine, and he groans, kisses her more deeply). It's a brief thing, but hot, and when their lips part, both of them are a bit short of breath.

Robin presses his forehead to hers, a sharp pinch in his chest at the knowledge that he's about to pop this magic around them like a pin into a balloon. He doesn't want to, hates the very thought of it, but he has to, he must, so he runs the tip of his nose up the bridge of hers until he can kiss her brow softly, and tells her, "We should get inside."

She hums her agreement, swallows lightly, and presses her lips together, one hand moving to his belly to give him a playful shove backward before she turns the doorknob behind her and steps around.

Henry's coming down the stairs as they walk in, and he cocks his head curiously at the two of them coming in from outside.

"Just a bit of the basil, I think," Robin says, his mind flicking quickly to any excuse for them to both be outside as Regina turns to him with a frown of confusion. "And if you could copy the recipe down for me before I leave, that'd be great. I'm fairly shit at cooking on my own." He glances up the stairs, "Hello, Henry," and comprehension finally dawns on Regina's face. Thank God her back's been to the boy this whole time.

"What were you two doing outside?" Henry asks suspiciously.

"Apparently forgetting the appropriate use of language in front of a child," Regina scolds, sauntering toward the kitchen, and good God, her arse in that dress. "I'll write it down, and clip some basil before you leave. But only if you're going to use it in the next day or two, otherwise just come by when you need it."

Her voice fades off into the kitchen, and Robin looks back to Henry, tells him, "I was asking your mum for some help in the kitchen, and hoping to nick a bit from her garden." The boy's eyes narrow, trying to suss out if he's being lied to. "Are you ready for your lesson?" Robin asks him, lifting the guitar clutched in his left hand.

Robin's not sure if they've pulled this off in the slightest, but Henry's devotion to the guitar wins out and he nods and trots down the last few steps and into the living room, grabbing his own instrument and telling Robin all about how much he's been practicing.

By the time they finish, Regina has dinner ready and set – a bowl of caprese salad with hunks of fresh mozzarella and tomato, and ribbons of that same fresh basil Robin had lied about earlier, along with chicken breasts and fresh sliced peaches. It's delicious, as per usual, but Robin's stomach is an oily mess of nerves, his appetite completely gone, and so it takes a fair bit of effort to force down bite after bite until his plate is clear.

It also takes considerable willpower to ignore the way Regina licks peach juice off her lower lip, or the way her necklace draws the eye straight down into the vee of her dress, or... bollocks, he's utterly screwed. He cannot abandon his principles to slake his lust tonight, he cannot. He has to tell her, he  _will_  tell her.

But then she sends Henry off to his schoolwork, and the look she gives Robin as her son climbs the stairs can only be described as hungry.

"Do you want another glass?" she asks, as she rises to refill her wine, and no, he thinks, but he tells her yes, and so his own glass gets topped off as well. And then she nips it into her fingers and carries them both to the living room, dirty dinner dishes still piled in the sink, but this is okay, this is good, he will tell her now.

He will find a way to tell her, he thinks, as he sits beside her on her sofa, as she sips wine, and then sets it aside. He even draws a breath to speak, but she beats him to it, her voice quiet, intimate, low enough for sharing secrets as she smirks and asks, "What do you think the odds are that he's going to be spying at the top of the stairs?"

Fuck, what if he is? It's one thing to tell Regina of his transgressions, it's another entirely for  _Henry_  to find out about them.

"I'll be right back," she tells him conspiratorially, and then she's leaving him here, heading for the stairs to no doubt somehow ensure they have a bit of privacy, to guarantee them the opportunity to snog like randy teenagers again without being caught, and that's not at all what's about to happen here. Not in the slightest.

Robin reaches for his wine, chugs down half of it, and then a bit more.

When she returns, she chuckles, "I told him I wanted to check his book report in an hour. That should keep him in his room."

Robin smiles automatically, because it's expected, his heart starting to thud in his ears as the moment of truth approaches.

But when she sits, she sits even closer than she had before, right up next to him, and her eyes are bright and restless, one hand sliding onto his thigh before she drops her gaze and shakes her head.

"This is ridiculous," she breathes. "I feel ridiculous. All I've been able to think about since Friday is getting you alone again."

Why? Why does she have to say things like that, and why does she have to bite at her lower lip just that way after she does, and–

He is a weak, weak man, because he is kissing her again. He tells himself that this is his one last time, the final kiss for her to enjoy untainted by what he's done, and so he's sure to make it a good one, slanting his head just so, licking against the seam of her lips until she opens to meet his tongue with hers, and it feels a bit like drowning, and a bit like falling, like the world is shifting and tilting – oh. No. That's them, the two of them, her hands fisted at his shoulders drawing him down on top of her, and maybe he could just tell her another day? Maybe it doesn't have to be today. Maybe he could wait until the weekend, come by on Friday before he picks up Roland, and–

No.

No. It has to be now. He cannot do this to her any longer. He has to tell her, and he has to do it now, or he'll spend the rest of his bloody life convincing himself of reasons not to.

Here goes nothing.

.::.

He rips his mouth back from hers, presses their foreheads together, his breath washing against her kiss-dampened mouth, and she opens her eyes to see him. He's so close that he's blurry, it hurts to look at him, but even this close she can see the way his eyes are scrunched shut, the way his face is pinched as if he's in physical pain.

She breathes his name, brings her fingers up to coast against the soft stubble over his jaw, and he pulls back from her then, sits up, and gives her a look of miserable regret.

 _What now?_ she wonders. He's been fighting this, them, for weeks and she cannot for the life of her figure out why. Any lingering doubts she'd had as to whether he was as attracted to her as she is to him had been dispelled by their date and what she can only call the heated make-out session that had come after it. Not to mention the way he's just kissed her breathless. It's something else then, but what? He's told her he's certain he'll hurt her, but he cannot possibly be  _this_ convinced that they're headed for pain. This can't just be a critical lack of self-esteem. There has to be more.

Regina pushes herself up until she's sitting, too, then asks him softly, "What is it? Why do you keep... fighting this?"

She's not giving up this time until he tells her the damn truth, whatever it is. She's tired of the yo-yo routine.

He lets out a heavy exhale, and says, finally, "I don't deserve you."

Oh, Jesus. Not this again.

"Robin," she starts to dismiss, to tell him he's being ridiculous, but she doesn't get more than his name out before he's interrupting her.

"I'm a criminal."

"Yes, I know," she reminds him, reaching for his fingers and weaving hers with them firmly, anticipating the way he'll try to pull away from her. He doesn't. "I've known since the week after we met." She glances pointedly between them, ducking her head to catch the edge of his gaze, as she adds, "Clearly, it's not a dealbreaker for me."

He looks at her fully, then, and looks… lost. More so than he has in all the months she's known him. "But I…"

When he doesn't continue, she does it for him: "Broke the law. A nonviolent crime, where no one got hurt, because you were desperate and wanted to help your family. I know all this, Robin."

"I…" He breathes in, out. "I stole."

"I figured." He blinks at that, and she shrugs, says, "It was either that or drug-related, and I figure you're not quite  _that_  stupid." She sobers slightly, adding, "Unless you stole drugs, in which case you're  _incredibly_  stupid."

He gives her the barest hint of a glare at that, and she thinks, good, that's more like it. But then he's back to looking tortured, back to that mouth open to speak with no words forthcoming. She waits him out this time.

"I didn't steal drugs," he finally manages. "I stole jewelry. I'd… I'd done some work for this older couple… While I was there, the man asked for help with his new security system, so I explained how things worked to him. Got quite familiar with it. Familiar enough that I was fairly confident I could get around it, and I'd heard them talk about going on holiday for the month of December, they were going to France…"

Her parents had gone to France for the month of December, Regina thinks absently.

And then she stops thinking for a moment, her mind goes entirely blank.

Realization settles heavy over her, like a cold leaden blanket. Her parents had gone on holiday for the entire month of December, to France, and while they were gone they'd been burglarized. Someone had broken in, disarmed the security system, and stolen a considerable amount of her mother's jewelry. And Robin has been going out of his way to avoid being with her, even though he clearly wants to, for weeks. Maybe months.

Since the beginning, she realizes, her fingers going slack against his, then drawing away. She'd thought it was the break-in, that it was him spending the night hammered and snoring on her sofa, that that was why he was always so willing to go out of his way for her, why he always insisted he owed her.

But no.

No, she can tell by the way he's looking at her now, the way he's looking at the way she's gaping at him in shocked confusion.

The words slip from her, soft, barely a whisper, "You robbed my parents."

His forehead knits together even tighter, and he reaches for her hand, stills when she stiffens before he even makes contact.

She's not breathing, she realizes. She's been holding her breath.

She lets it out in a whoosh, looks away from him, around the room, at the coffee table, the fireplace, the piano, Henry's guitar, anything other than the face of this man she's been so attracted to.

"I'm so sorry," he tells her, and he sounds as though he means it, but, well, he's a thief, so maybe he's a good liar, too.

When she finally finds her voice again, it's weak, weaker than she'd like it to be. "How long have you known? That they were  _my_ parents?"

He looks away from her then, ashamed, admits, "Since John told me the name of the person who had his spare key."

Regina laughs. She cannot help it, it bubbles up in her, sounds in her throat, not quite hysterical but not entirely sane either. And then it fades, and she shakes her head, presses her lips together. Her shock is giving way to indignance, to anger.

"Since the day we met," she clarifies, and then she's asking, "So what was this?" pointing between them. "Get into my good graces, charm me, disarm me, so that when you tell me you burglarized my parents' home I won't turn you in?"

It's Robin's turn to look shocked, although he has  _no_  right, and then he's shaking his head, and insisting, "Regina, no. The smartest thing for me would have been to avoid you entirely, to never be more than friendly neighbors, and I've tried to stay away from you, to avoid this, but…"

He has. She knows that. She  _knows_  that. He's tried not to let this happen, and of course he has because he  _stole_  from her  _parents_.

"I... I  _asked_  you." Anger flares hot in her gut, fully replacing the numb feeling for just a moment. Her voice hisses and seethes, "I have asked you so many times what the hell the problem was and you said–"

"I know," he winces, and, "I wanted to tell you–"

"Bullshit."

Another wince, like her words are arrows, and good. Good, he should hurt, because she does too, and it echoes in her head then - his words from before, his insistence that he was only going to cause her pain. And this is what he meant, this is what he was talking about. Not some future down the line where he might fail her, but this, right here, knowing that he absolutely would, without a doubt, cause her pain. And he dated her anyway, kissed her anyway, nearly made her come on his couch while all the while he was lying to her. Keeping secrets from her – huge, massive secrets, oh God, she had asked him point blank less than a week ago if there was anything more than what she knew, and he had  _lied_  to her.

"If you wanted to tell me, you would have when I asked."

"I..." He shakes his head, looking tortured and lost, and fuck him, he has no right. Not right now. Not when he's been keeping her in the dark for months. Since the day they met. "I didn't want to lose you."

Regina shuts her eyes because she can feel the prick of tears against the back of them, anger, pain, she's not sure, but she's damn sure he won't see a drop of them, and then she shakes her head. Her heart is pounding, her fingertips icy.

"Just get out," she tells him softly, coldly, opening her eyes again and flattening him with a look.

"Regina, please," he begs, his fingers reaching for her, halting, fisting against his knees. "I'm sorry. I was desperate, and it was wrong, I know that, I know it was wrong, and it has cost me  _everything_. And I know that I should have told you, but I like you. I really do, and I was scared. Please do not say anything to anyone. If I go down for this, I'll never see my boy again.  _Please_ –"

She holds up a hand to cut him off, shakes her head, her gaze sliding away. Cannot even look at him. Not for one second more.

"Get out," she repeats. "And do not come here next week."

"Regina, I–"

"I don't want to hear it," she cuts him off. "Get out. Of. My home. Now."

He stays rooted for another minute more, long enough that she draws another breath to order him out more forcefully, but she never has to say the words. He's on his feet and grabbing his things, murmuring again how sorry he is before he heads for the door.

Regina stays on the sofa, her head swimming, her mind buzzing with this new revelation.

**.::.**

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,  _fuck._

He should  _never_  have let this happen, should never have gotten this close to her. This was the inevitable end, and now here they are. He's hurt her, betrayed her, and now she holds all the cards, holds his most dangerous secret in her palms, holds his very right to stay in this country, and she is angry.

And rightfully so.

He's an idiot.


	17. Chapter 17

Regina pours herself another glass of wine, and then one more after that. Spends the time it takes to drink them sitting at her kitchen table and thinking back over every minute she can recall with Robin, everything he's ever said about what he did, every time she's ever told him how highly she prizes honesty, every moment of what had seemed to be a genuine connection between them.

She feels raw.

Scraped open, aching.

He'd lied to her. He's been lying to her. From the day they met.

He'd come back to her home, tail between his legs, and begged for her spare key, all the while knowing who she was, who her parents were. He'd helped her set up her own security system, she realizes with a shiver and a sudden urge to check on all her valuables.

But that's silly, he wouldn't steal from her.

She stills with her glass halfway to her lips, frowning at herself. What a stupid thing to think. That he wouldn't do it to her, wouldn't steal from  _her_. Why not? He'd lied to her. Kept secrets from her. Spent time in her home, with her son, with  _her_. Had been here with Henry alone, had had unrestricted access to her home and her belongings for hours. She should probably check her jewelry.

She feels sick.

How could he... How did she not... Was she really so stupid that...?

What if he's telling the truth?

That he really does like her, that he was too much of a coward to tell her because he was afraid of exactly this? (Well, smart move, Romeo; he  _should_ have been afraid of this.)

No, that can't be true. He'd chased it too quickly with concern for his jail-free status. He didn't tell her, because he didn't want her to turn his sorry ass in, and she should. She should pick up the phone right now and call it in, an anonymous tip. Not that she has any evidence. Just her word against his, but maybe it would jog her parents' memories, or maybe she could call Marian and–

Marian.

She wonders if Marian has known all along, too – they've waved at each other a time or two, when Roland has been picked up or dropped off. She's probably "Henry's mom" to the other woman, but she's a known entity to some extent. Does  _Marian_  know what Robin did to her family?

Or is she just focused on protecting her own. Probably that. She tries to imagine – for a moment, she tries, hard, to think through the vortex of wine and betrayal – what she would have done if Daniel had done something like this. Even Graham. If he'd committed a crime, and she'd known about it.

She'd have left Graham. She cared for him, but... she'd have wanted to step back, at the very least. But would she have turned him in? Maybe. She might have.

Daniel, though... Daniel, she's not sure. She would give anything –  _anything_  – to have Daniel in Henry's life. What would she tolerate to keep him there, she wonders? To what lengths would she go to ensure her son had his father, even if said father was a lying thief?

It's a silly line of thought – too fraught with grief and lost opportunities and what-ifs. It doesn't compare.

But she's seen Robin with Roland, she knows how deeply he loves him. The lengths to which he'd go to see him safe, and cared for. Isn't that what had gotten him into this mess in the first place? A terribly misguided attempt to take care of his family? And could she live with herself if she tore that apart? If she took Roland's father away – sent him away where there was no more weekend visits, no more grilled cheeses or chasing a soccer ball in the park or wet doggy kisses that make him giggle – could she live with knowing she'd done that over a few pieces of jewelry her mother hadn't even missed?

She'd known about the theft – known her parents had been burglarized – Cora had bitched and bitched incessantly about who would have had the gall to do such a thing. But she'd expressed not a drop of longing for the missing pieces, had practically scoffed at her father when he'd offered to replace whatever she wanted.

Robin had been right all those months ago – nobody had gotten hurt.

Nobody but  _her_. She hurts, oh, how she hurts. A sharp ache in her chest, a prickle of unshed tears behind her eyes. She had been falling for him.

She can admit it now that everything is in shambles around her. She'd been falling for him. And she'd thought he'd been falling for her, too – hopes now that he wasn't. That it was all a lie, because that would probably be easier.

Better.

Then she's just a fool who fell for a smooth-talking con man. The alternative – that he really does feel the way he's said he does, that he really is caring, and kind, and incredibly fucking stupid, but is still that man who sat in the chair she's in right now, and held her while she cried, cooked her dinner – that he  _is_  that man, and she's going to have to let him go anyway, that's almost worse.

She's still sitting there at the table, staring at the last few drops of wine in her glass, her mind a little wobbly from alcohol and mental exhaustion, when Henry comes wandering in, looking at her in bewilderment.

She straightens, blinks, and forces a smile for him. "Hi, sweetheart."

"You never came to check my book report," he tells her, and her stomach drops. She'd completely forgotten.

"Oh," she says, shaking her head, and telling him, "I lost track of time. I'm sorry. Did you get it finished?"

"Yeah," Henry answers, changing the subject to, "Did Robin leave without saying goodbye again?"

Once again, she finds herself wishing her son wasn't so damn perceptive.

"He had to go," she tells him, rising from her chair and doing an admirable job of hiding the way the whole kitchen tilts and spins at the movement before righting itself. Four glasses of wine will do that, she supposes.

God, she's tipsy in front of her ten-year-old.

"Are you two fighting again?"

Regina brings her glass to the sink, flips on the tap and starts to rinse the dinner dishes. "When have we ever been fighting?" she questions mildly, and Henry huffs behind her.

"I'm not as stupid as you think, you know," he gripes, and she turns then. Cannot help herself, she will not –  _will not_  – allow her son to think for one second that she finds him stupid. (She hears Cora, over and over, like an echo  _You stupid girl... you stupid girl..._ She feels stupid, today. She feels like an idiot. But Henry will never feel that way because of her, not if she can help it.)

"Henry Daniel, you look at me," she tells him, bending to his level when she finds him just behind her and lifting her fingers to touch his chin. "You are not stupid. I do not think you're stupid. I have never thought you were stupid. Okay?"

He looks at her for a few seconds, his eyes stormy, his mouth set in a scowl. And then he nods, says, "Okay, but Mom, why won't you just tell me the truth?"

Regina exhales. Why indeed? The truth would crush him – he idolizes Robin. The truth is no option here, but maybe a version of it? No. No matter what she says, it won't land well, and truth be told, it's none of his business.

His eyes go flinty then, and his brow furrows tighter. He looks grumpy, there's no other word for it, and then he asks, "Did he break your heart? Cuz I like him, but I'll kick his butt."

The laugh pops out before she can stop it, a grin splitting her face as she shakes her head, pulling him in close and giving him a tight hug, burying her nose in his hair and breathing him in. He needs a shower, she thinks with a frown. He's not yet old enough to smell like funky boy, thank God, but his hair smells like, well... hair.

"Thank you, sweetie, but that won't be necessary," she murmurs, dropping a kiss to his crown, then cupping his cheeks and tilting his head back so she can meet his eyes. "Now, you go take a shower, and I'll check that book report, okay?"

"You're not going to answer me, are you?"

"I am not," she confirms, and he huffs again, pulling away and trudging toward the stairs, calling back at her, "I know there's something going on between you! If you won't tell me, he will."

Well, there's a sobering thought. And a situation she'd very much like to avoid.

With a sigh, Regina turns back to rinsing the dishes, loading them into the dishwasher. She'll have to think of something to tell Henry, after all, or end up with him going to Robin for some version of the truth.

And she won't have that. Certainly not now, not after... everything.

**.::.**

Robin is drunk.

It's perhaps not the best way to deal with his problems, especially if said problems could have police knocking on his door any moment. She wouldn't, she won't, he doesn't think she'd – but she'd been so angry, and so  _hurt_ , and he's not sure which makes him feel worse. The hurt, probably. He'd hurt her.

He'd told her he would, and there he went. Hurting her. Betraying her.

He's such an idiot.

An idiot who's going to have another beer. He's working on a pyramid, after all, and has only five bottles. He's set them on the table, one, then two, then two more, all lined up. One short of finishing that perfect bottom line.

Maybe he should leave it that way. It would be symbolic. An imperfect representation of his life, where no matter what he bloody does, he ends up incomplete, missing pieces, a useless hodgepodge instead of something that actually means anything.

If he'd stopped at four it could have been a diamond, and he'd be a bit less drunk.

But, well, he hadn't stopped at four, so off to the kitchen it is.

Robin opens the last beer (he'll have to replace these for John... maybe tomorrow), pitching the cardboard container of the six-pack toward the recycling. It misses.

Figures.

But he's going to finish that pyramid.

He's working on bettering himself, after all. On becoming more whole.

Six beers it is.

That's where John finds him when he comes in – sitting on the sofa with a nearly-complete arrangement of bottles, staring at the TV, which is off.

"I was about to ask if you drank all the beer, but I guess I have my answer," John greets, dropping down into one of the arm chairs, since Robin is parked dead-center on the sofa.

Robin just grunts.

"You told her then," his friend surmises, and Robin feels a flash of heat, of annoyance. If bloody John hadn't badgered him so much, maybe he'd have spent his evening kissing Regina instead of getting kicked out.

"I did tell her," Robin tells him with mock-positivity. "And it went swimmingly, let me tell you."

"Might have gone better if you'd told her sooner."

Robin glares.

"Alright, alright," John waves off, settling back into his chair with a sigh. "I'll drop it. She calling the cops?"

"I don't know," Robin answers honestly, his thumb scraping against the edge of the label on his beer. The bottle is sweating, the paper going soft. "I hope not."

"Well they haven't turned up yet," John reasons, like that's some sort of great accomplishment. "Maybe she just needs some time to digest."

Robin nods, swigs his beer. For a few minutes, they sit in silence. The news is playing on the TV John has just turned on, but he's hit mute and is scrolling through the cable guide for something to watch.

Maybe John is right. Maybe she just needs time. Maybe she'll come around.

Maybe she'll call the police and have him arrested out of spite.

Maybe she'll never speak to him again.

Oddly enough, it's that last one that has him most distraught tonight. It should be jail, it should be the prospect of prison time and watching his son grow from behind bars and then across an ocean, but tonight, right now, with the memory of the coldness in her voice as she'd ordered him from her home, it's the loss of her.

He's fairly certain that no matter how this pans out, no matter if she calls the police or not, they're done. He's broken her trust – trust she'd so highly valued, had made a point to tell him so, and he's such an idiot, he should have told her months ago. Should have worried more for her heart and her comfort than for his own guilt. Should have stayed away.

His beer hits the table with a heavy clunk, still half-full, but he can't stomach another drop.

"Should I try to talk to her?" he wonders, and John's reply is an instant and heavy,  _No_. Well, that answers that, then.

"Don't push her," John warns. "What did I tell you when Marian found out?"

Robin thinks back to the day he showed up here, rucksack full of clothes and nowhere else to go. He'd wanted to go back home not long after, had wanted to let himself in and be waiting for her and then she'd have to talk to him. Had wanted to just have it all out when he could, but John had told him to give her time. Not to test the patience of the woman holding a live round of ammo over his fate.

"That I fucked up, and now I have to live with it. On her terms," Robin remembers. It had worked out alright with Marian, he supposes, if you can call breaking up and not speaking for two months "alright." But she hadn't reported him, and he'd been able to earn his way back into something resembling her good graces. She trusts him now, at least – with Roland, anyway, if not with her.

So maybe that's the best he can hope for here. That she'll allow him to keep teaching Henry once a week, without the shared meals, or the kisses, or the sound of her laughter, the warmth of her smirk, the challenge in her eyes.

His stomach hurts at the thought, but John is right, is telling him, "Exactly. And you'd been together five years and had a kid. You've known Regina less than five months and had one good date. You've gotta let her decide, brother."

Robin nods, says, "Stop here," when John pauses on some nature show about the lions of the Serengeti. It's mindless, and that's what he wants right now. Wants to not think.

He'll wait for her, he decides.

He just hopes he's not waiting for months.

**.::.**

"Delivery for Regina Mills."

Of course he sends flowers, and of course they come while Sidney is sitting in her office going over the status of the TLK account on Wednesday afternoon.

Of course.

She almost tells the delivery boy to take them back. To call the sender and let him know they'd been refused.

But she doesn't.

Instead, she takes them with a scowl, tugs the small, folded card from the little prong stuck into the vase amongst a dozen red roses and supplementary greens, and then plunks the vase on the far side of her desk, where it's half-hidden by her computer monitor.

She slips the card into her pocket, unread, and settles back into her chair, asking Sidney, "Where were we?"

His brows lift slightly. "You don't want to read that?"

"No need," she tells him, unable to keep the tart irritation out of her voice. "I know who they're from."

The next few seconds are awkward. Sidney sitting there obviously torn as to whether or not inquire as to whom, and what the obvious apology is for, and Regina tapping her pen against the edge of her legal pad, offering up nothing.

Finally, he settles on asking, "Is everything alright?"

"It's fine, Sidney," she tells him, straightening her spine slightly and brushing her hair back out of her face (she needs to get it cut, maybe she'll book a spa day – Lord knows she could use it). "But I don't want to talk about it."

Sidney nods and drops the subject, much to her relief. They focus on work for the next little while, the sharp point of the card making itself known against her thigh every now and then, poking through the thin material of her pocket when she shifts. But she does her best to ignore it, just like she's been doing her best to ignore thoughts of Robin for the last two days.

She's mostly succeeded by the time she and Sidney part ways, but then he pauses at her doorway, turns back to her and says, "Regina?" She looks up. "You deserve someone who thinks you hang the moon. If he can't appreciate what he has, he doesn't deserve you."

She looks down at the square indent in her pocket, hears Robin's  _You should give your time to the people who care about you_  from the other night, and glances back up to Sidney. If only life were that simple.

"Thank you," she tells him, because what else is there to say to that? He nods, and leaves, and Regina finally pulls the card from her pocket.

It's hand-written – he'd taken the time to go to the florist himself, to write the card himself. But then, she supposes when you're apologizing for a felony, you probably want to be the only witness to your words.

The card is vague enough not to be incriminating, though, Robin's tight, messy handwriting crammed onto the slip of cardstock in black ink:  _Regina - I'm sorry. I was an idiot & a coward & I should have told you sooner. I won't ask your forgiveness bc I'm sure I don't deserve it & I won't bother you if you never want to speak again. But this wasn't a con, I do care about you & I'm so sorry. Robin_

She believes him. She wishes she didn't, but she does.

Unfortunately that leaves the question of what to do next.

**.::.**

She doesn't make him wait a month, after all. Not even a week.

It's Thursday night when he feels the triple-buzz vibration of his cell phone in his pocket – the one he set four days ago so that he would not miss her if she tried to contact him. Because he's a fool, and a sap, and he feels like shit about all this.

He reaches for it immediately, nearly botches a perfectly good pour of beer when he overflows the pint by a scant second, ends up dropping his phone in his rush to knock the tap back into place and cursing as he wipes the beer-splashed screen of it against his jeans.

He stuffs it back into his pocket, serves the pint, then fishes his phone out again, his heart hammering.

_I want to talk. Come over tonight after work. I'll be up._

Robin frowns. It'll be late by the time he gets off – the bar closes at two, and then they have to close out. He texts her back, tells her so.

_I know. Call when you get here – don't ring the bell._

Robin swallows heavily, tells her he'll be there, and spends the rest of the night with his heart lodged thickly in his throat.

**.::.**

It is with no small amount of dread that Robin climbs Regina's porch at nearly three o'clock Friday morning. She'd left the light on over the door, and he can see that it's not dark inside, but the lights are still down low. He cannot believe she is awake, not with work in just a few hours. What can possibly be so important they have to talk about it  _now_ , in the middle of the night?

He knows what's important between them, certainly, but you'd think it could wait for a decent hour. You'd think she'd want sleep. Unless she's sitting on the other side of that door with a detective, ready to throw him in the clink for his betrayal.

The thought gives him pause, has him freezing with his phone already in hand, his finger hovering over her name in his contacts.

He has no idea what to say to her. Has no idea what she'll say to him. He's a mess of nerves and self-doubt, but he takes a deep breath and presses his thumb down onto the screen.

It rings, and it rings, and it rings.

Her voice is low and scratchy when she finally answers. Sleepy. He's woken her.

"Are you here?"

"I'm on the step," he tells her, keeping his voice low and feeling a pang of guilt at having roused her.

But she must have been in the living room, she mustn't have been far, because it's less than a minute before he hears the click of the lock, and the door is opening, and then there she is. Framed in low lighting, just the lamps in the living room are on, and clad in jeans that look well-loved and that Boston College sweatshirt he now knows belonged to Henry's father. Her face is bare, and were it not for the ramrod straightness of her spine, the tense set of her mouth, the crease in her forehead, she might look soft.

But she doesn't, not like this.

She doesn't bother with hello, just steps back and holds the door open for him, gestures him inside, into the living room, back to that couch where he'd blown everything to pieces for them only days ago.

Even then, even when he's sitting, even when she takes the cushion beside him, a solid foot of space between his body and hers where before there had been scant inches if that, she doesn't say anything. Her hands settle on her knees, run back and forth a time or to from kneecap to mid-thigh and then settle as she exhales. She's not looking at him.

Robin's at a loss. Is he supposed to start? What is it she wants from him?

"I'm sorry I woke you," he attempts, the least of the things he's sorry for lately, but worth mentioning nonetheless.

That, at least, shakes her out of silence.

"It's fine," she tells him. "I asked you to. I didn't want to have to run interference around Henry for this conversation."

"Regina, I'm so sorry–" he begins, but she lifts a hand swiftly, palm toward him, an unspoken order for silence.

"I'm going to ask you some things, and you're going to tell me the truth. And then you're going to go home." He's told her the truth, will tell her any truth she asks of him, he's no secrets left to hide. So he nods, agrees immediately. And then she scrutinizes him, studies him with eyes that are dark and turbulent. Always so expressive, she is, and right now she's full of pain. Pain that he caused. Her jaw works back and forth, and for a second he thinks he sees her eyes dampen, but then she blinks and it's gone and he thinks he may have imagined it. Finally, after a few minutes' perusal, she asks him, "What did you buy with the money?"

"I paid the rent, and had the car fixed, and I bought Christmas presents for Roland," he answers, looking her in the eye the whole time no matter how much the sight of her eyes pains him right now (he deserves it, he's the one who brought this on them).

"What did you buy  _for you_?" she questions.

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"I didn't do it for the thrill, Regina, I did it for my family. I spent every last bit on taking care of Marian and Roland."

Now she's the one who's nodding, slowly, and then something shifts in her expression, anger melting away to be replaced with bone-tiredness, with such a weary look he wants to sink into a hole in the ground out of shame for having caused it.

"Why didn't you tell me months ago?"

"I was afraid of what you'd do," Robin admits – not a new admission, he doesn't think. It should be an obvious answer. "I'm not a citizen. If I get arrested, if I'm found guilty, I'm looking at jail and being sent back to England. Marian wants me in Roland's life, but I've no illusions about whether she'd want to bring him to visit his father in prison, or how often I'd see him if it meant a trans-Atlantic flight every time." She listens, but he can't read her. He can't tell what's going on in her head. "I'm still afraid of what you'll do," he confesses quietly, looking away from her, around the room. Only then does he notice the overly-bloomed bouquet of roses on the table between the arm chairs across the room. So she'd not thrown them out, then. That's something.

"We make mistakes," she says quietly, drawing his attention back to her. "Our children shouldn't have to pay for them. I have no interest in taking Roland's father away from him; your secret's safe with me."

The toll that particular uncertainty had been taking on him was something Robin hadn't quite been fully aware of until just this moment, when he feels his breath whoosh out and his shoulders sag. Thank God for that, at least. He won't be going to jail, not because of anything she says anyway.

"Thank you," he whispers, and his fingers twitch with the need to reach for her, to touch her, any part of her. Worn cotton, soft denim, warm skin. He wants to thread his fingers through her hair, wants to hold her. But he can't.

"Why…" she begins again, shaking her head, looking down at her hands. She inhales slowly, then looks up at him, a look that bruises, and tries again, "Why did you date me?"

It twists the knife in his gut more sharply, makes him wince at the oddly physical discomfort.

"Because I wanted to be with you," he tells her, and this time he does reach for her, but he doesn't connect. Pulls himself back. "You're so bloody wonderful," he says, and she turns her face away, but not before he catches the way she presses her lips together hard. "Witty, and kind, and patient, and you took a chance on me when most people probably wouldn't. And I liked you. I like you. I want to be around you. I want to be the person who's there for you."

She turns back to him, then, her eyes brimming with unshed tears, her face accusatory and bewildered. "You can't be," she tells him, her voice surprisingly steady despite the tears that gut him. "This – we – Robin, you can't ever meet my parents."

"I've met your parents," he reminds her needlessly, hating himself for saying it the minute the words are out of his mouth and annoyance flashes in her gaze.

"You can't ever meet them  _again_ ," she clarifies. "If they see you, and it jogs something…" She shakes her head, crosses her arms over her chest. She looks smaller like this, late at night, in a top that swallows her torso, her purple-painted toes bare. Or maybe it's just that she looks vulnerable as she says, "My mother will  _destroy_  you if she realizes what you've done."

"So I won't meet her," he reasons, and then he tries for what is likely impossible, starts to say, "That doesn't mean we can't–"

She doesn't let him finish.

"What would be the point?" Her arms hug tighter, her head swinging side to side. "We have no future. This is…" She blinks and dislodges a tear, lifts a hand quickly to brush it away, her lashes fluttering rapidly to bat the rest of them back inside, and then she steels herself and says, "I want you to keep teaching Henry. I don't want him to know about all this; he already suspects there's something going on between us, and if you stop coming around entirely, he'll keep asking questions. So, I want you here on Monday as usual, but this? Us? We can't."

He knew it was coming, knew this much was likely, but it still hurts. Still has a part of him wanting to grasp desperately at any chance he can to be with her, but when he starts to speak, says her name, she just shakes her head, tells him, "It's over, Robin. It has to be, you know that."

There's nothing much left to say, nothing but, "I really am sorry," which he says with all the sincerity he can muster, all the good it does him. He finally, finally lets his hand fall onto hers, regretting it instantly when her brow furrows deeper at the contact. But he doesn't let go, can't let go. "I wish I'd never…" He wants to wish he'd never stolen the jewels, but if that were the case, then he'd never have met her. The words stick on his tongue, they won't come. Still, he manages, "I should have stayed away."

It's not the thing he'd imagine would slice at her, but for some reason, her breath is sucking in shakily, her chin starting to quiver. She shakes her head back and forth, back and forth, and when she looks at him, he hates himself all over again.

"I needed you that night," she says, her voice reedy with emotion, no need to expound upon just what night she's talking about. He knows. "But you should have told me then, you should have said something before I– Before we got caught up in… more."

"I know," Robin tells her, tightening his grip on her fingers, her own hold going firm in tandem. "I cocked everything up; I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I hurt you, I never wanted to hurt you, Regina, I just didn't know how to–"

The kiss is unexpected. He'd been talking, words ramping and tumbling over each other and then her mouth had covered his and now they're frozen. Lips pressed to lips, noses tucked next to each other, and that hand that has wanted so badly to be in her hair rises and threads, cups against the back of her skull. He kisses her slowly, savouring because this one is the last and they both know it. He feels a sudden huff of breath against his cheek, feels her lip tremble as he kisses it and then it's all over, their foreheads pressing together, breath shared between them.

She doesn't pull back, not right away, so Robin wraps his arms around her, draws her in close and holds tight, tucking his nose into her hair and breathing in her shampoo.

"You should go," she whispers into the quiet of the house, and he knows it's true, knows she needs sleep if nothing else.

Still, he lingers for a moment, coasts his palm up and down her back, and then lets his cheek skim hers as he finally pulls back, pressing one final kiss to her brow, before murmuring again how sorry he is.

She shows him to the door, shuts him out into the night, and every step farther away from her tugs at his middle, a feeling that he can only describe as stretching a tether. Like there's a string that binds them, him to her, and their yawning distance is somehow unnatural. He feels her all the way home and into John's place, feels her as he strips down and falls into bed.

He doesn't sleep.

**.::.**

Regina lingers at the door, her brow pressed against the wood, breathing slowly and wishing for that gnawing ache in her middle to just go away.

When it doesn't, when she gives up, she flips the lock on the deadbolt, and then moves to the security system, activating it before climbing the stairs to her bedroom.

It's weak, it's stupid, it's an overreaction to what little they actually had between them. But after she strips out of her jeans, wriggles out of her bra, she climbs into bed, tucks herself beneath the covers and cries. Shaky shoulders and snotty nose, she presses the sleeve of Daniel's sweatshirt to her tears and mourns the loss of the first person in a long, long time who had been there for her, who had seen through her walls down to the heart of her and wanted to root in there a while and care for her.

They may not have had much, but what they had  _mattered_ , and there's a hole there now in place of it.

She sees dawn with puffy, sore eyes and a stuffy nose. She burns the breakfast toast, her head feeling like a balloon on a string, light with exhaustion, inhibiting her ability to do such simple things as make a meal for her child. So despite the fact that it's incredibly unprofessional, she calls out of work, telling Henry she has a migraine brewing and not to worry about her. Mary Margaret picks him up for school, a favor Regina will have to owe her for in the future, but not right now.

Right now, she pops a sleeping pill, crawls back underneath her covers and finally gets some rest.


	18. Chapter 18

Regina has come to loathe Mondays.

It's the third one since Robin's confession, since their late-night talk on her sofa, and she can now safely say that Mondays are the worst. Never mind the usual disappointments – the end to the weekend, the nail-chewing anxiety of leaving Henry asleep at home alone in the mornings (he's ten-nearly-eleven and old enough for such things, she tells herself) and then waiting for the call that he's up and dressed and safely arrived at Granny Lucas' for the day (or worse – having to try to rouse him early enough to make it to Mary Margaret's place before work, as if getting up at the same time he did for school is positively criminal during summer vacation). No, summer Mondays are bad enough on their own, but with The Robin Situation what it is, they're even worse. There is simply no way for them to not be an awkward mess, not now that she knows he spent months lying to her – and not with the weeks apart bringing her to the realization that she doesn't care nearly as much as she ought to about what it is he actually did.

But she does care about his safety, his well-being, and she knows her mother. If Cora found out, if Cora saw him and it jogged some dormant memory… She'd annihilate him. She fired the housekeeper, a woman who had worked for her parents since before Henry was born, just because she'd needed someone to blame for the break-in, needed some kind of justice even if she'd had no proof and no reason to believe that Marisol had had anything to do with the crime at all. And yet…

Robin is safer far, far away from her parents.

Which means they have no future, no chance of anything real, anything lasting, and Regina is just… too old. She's too old for something that goes nowhere, for something she knows can never be more than it is, and so here they are.

Smack dab in the middle of Awkwardville, USA. Population: two.

He's come every week for Henry's lessons, and she has made a point to make herself scarce. She doesn't send him home with food anymore, because she's been paying him properly for weeks and they're civil, but not… friends. She and Henry eat before his lessons now – eight was awfully late for dinner, anyway. Their Monday night meals are quicker, things she can throw together in a few minutes instead of a full hour, and because she is a little bit of a coward (and because his voice makes her ache right in her middle, makes her yearn for a month ago when she didn't know anything except that she liked this man, and he liked her, and that she was supported, and respected, and– this train of thought is not helping…) she tries to stay away from anywhere that adjoins the living room.

It's not that she's hiding, it's just that… she needs space. Time to process. Time to coddle her aching heart without having to have it accidentally battered again by something as innocent as the kind and patient way with which he talks to her child.

So two weeks ago, she did laundry. Last week, she ran.

This week, she's about to hit the treadmill again when she hears her phone ringing in the kitchen, and she has to zip her hoodie up over her sports bra (he's seen her topless, but that was then and this is now and everything has changed) and jog across the hall to grab it.

It's her father, a picture of the two of them taken just a couple of weeks ago smiling up at her from the caller ID screen, and her lips curve automatically as she answers, lifting the phone to her ear and greeting, "Hi, Daddy," as she strolls back toward the privacy of the den.

"Hello, dear."

Regina freezes. It's not her father.

It's her mother. Her mother, whom she has not spoken a word to since Mother's Day. Her mother, who had a birthday last week, and who received no visit, no phone call. Just a very expensive bouquet of flowers, and a card signed by both Regina and Henry.

Still, Regina's first thought is for her father: "Why are you calling me from Daddy's phone?" she asks, her feet finally carrying her the last few steps into the den (please say she's not calling because something bad has happened, anything but that).

"I didn't think you'd answer if I called from mine," her mother tells her honestly, and oddly without much malice, without that tone she usually uses when she's trying to bend Regina to her will or make her feel guilty for doing something so simple as existing as an independent, individual person.

Her momentary anxiety unspooling, Regina shuts the door behind her (this isn't going to be a pretty conversation, she can already tell, can already feel tonight's dinner of toaster oven tuna melts, cucumber, and potato chips go leaden in her stomach), and sits all the way to one end of the sofa, curling her legs up under her.

"You're right," she murmurs into the phone, but she doesn't let her anger bleed through. It's simply the truth, and they both know it. If she'd seen Cora's name on that screen, she'd have muted the call and run a little bit harder, a little bit further. She'd never take her mother's call on a Monday.

"And I understand why, sweetheart," her mother says, sounding for once like she actually… might?

"Oh?" Regina questions, not offering up any more than that. Waiting her mother out.

"Yes, dear," Cora says to her. "Mother's Day was… Well, it was a disaster, I think we can both agree on that." Regina makes a noncommittal sound in the back of her throat and waits for the verbal body blow. The blame train barreling into her at full speed. It never comes. Instead she gets, "And I know that was my fault."

Regina sits up a little straighter, feeling twin swells of gratified relief and dread-filled suspicion at her mother's words. "You… Yes, it was," Regina recovers, and screw it. If her mother is going to own up, maybe tonight she will speak up. "You were awful to me."

"I know, sweetheart, and I'm sorry."

"You humiliated me in front of my son. You picked me apart, Mother, and for what? I don't understand it; what did I ever do to deserve being treated that way? And by my own mother."

She hears her mother take a deep breath in, and one out, and then she says, "Regina, I'm trying to apologize." It's a non-answer. A reminder that Cora is here practically crawling by her standards. "I know that things between us lately have been strained. And I want to mend that, sweetheart. I've missed you so much. You, and Henry, you're so important to your father and me, and we miss seeing you. I know sometimes I'm too critical, and I need to learn to let you be who you are, regardless of what that is." Regina rolls her eyes – that's the mother she knows so well. An insult wrapped in a pretty package. Still, she's apologizing, and Cora never does that. Almost never, at least not this sincerely.

"Thank you, Mother," Regina hears herself saying, automatically. After all, Mother is being kind, and kindness must be repaid with gratitude no matter how acrid it tastes on one's tongue. She doesn't know what else to say. There are other things, so many things, so many hurt, angry, insecure things, but they'd only become ammunition later. Once this mood has passed, once she manages to somehow step in it all over again and ignite Mother's darker side.

"But I hope you know it's just because I love you," Cora continues, and Regina shuts her eyes, squeezes them tight and bites her tongue because no, Mother, that's not love. "And all I've ever wanted is what's best for you."

That's not true. It's just not true. Regina thinks of Daniel, and Henry, and this house, and…

"No, Mother," she says, unable to resist the urge to rock the boat, but she makes a point not to be petulant about it, at least. It wouldn't help her case any to be surly. "All you've ever wanted is… what's best for you. Or, what  _you_  think is best for me, but… That doesn't mean it  _is_  best, Mother. You never listen to me. I'm not a child anymore, and–"

"Oh, Regina, I know that," Cora sighs, a hint of weary irritation in her voice, and Regina feels her temper spike.

"I was speaking, Mother," she says tartly. "And this is exactly what I'm talking about. I am trying to  _talk_  to you–"

"You're trying to argue with me."

"No, I'm not," Regina defends, cursing herself for the way her voice rises. It makes her sound young. Immature. Cora will never respond to that, so she takes a breath and is more careful of her tone when she says, "You called because you wanted to talk. I'm assuming you called because we haven't spoken in over a month. Well, this is why, Mother. So if you want to talk with me about it, we can talk. But not if you're going to talk  _at_  me, and not if you're going to talk  _over_  me, and not if you're going to dismiss me. If you want to talk about this, then I need you to actually listen to me." She waits a beat, her heart starting to thud the way it usually does when she stands up to her mother. Her mother who, shockingly, stays silent.

Regina isn't sure if that is progress or if she should brace herself for fallout of some kind, but she takes it anyway, pushing forward with, "I'm not a child anymore. I know what's best for me." Robin pops into her mind, and she realizes that she's lying through her teeth. Obviously she  _doesn't_  know what's best for her, but Mother never needs to know that, and her miserable love life isn't the point now anyway. "And I know what's best for Henry. I know how to take care of my son, and my body, and my home, and I just… I don't– I wish– I don't know what happened, but for the last year  _every time_  I see you, it's a battle, and I can't do that anymore, Mother. I want to fix things, I do, but it won't be at the expense of myself."

She falls silent again, and still nothing from her mother. For a second, she wonders if the call has been dropped and she hasn't realized it. Even goes so far as to pull the phone from her ear and check, but no, the call is still going, her father is still smiling back at her from the screen, and so she brings the phone back to her ear and asks, "Mother?"

"I'm listening," Cora replies, and Regina smirks before she can help it. Right. Taking that one to heart, then. "Are you finished?"

"For now," Regina answers, shifting on the sofa so she's curled into it a bit more fully, drawing her knees up toward her chest and wrapping one arm around them as she waits for whatever reaction her mother is going to have to her assertiveness. It's very rarely good, but it seems like she's trying – but is she telling the truth? Or is she just buttering Regina up to slice her down the middle like she did the last time they were together?

"Good," Cora says, and then, "Is it my turn?" Regina's stomach goes hot and then cold, and she offers a quiet  _Yes_. "Sweetheart, I know you can take care of yourself. You are an independent, smart, successful woman, and your father and I couldn't be more proud of you." She might as well have punched her in the gut for the way Regina's breath stalls out. Is this real? Or is this just more of her mother's usual gaslighting? She wants to believe it, wants so badly to believe it, but she knows better. Cora goes in cycles; weeks, months, even years of kindness but then her true colors creep back out and Regina's crying in her kitchen on the shoulder of a man who doesn't need to carry her burdens and she just… she… "I don't mean to hurt you–" Yes, you do. Yes, you  _do_. She needs to hang up, she should hang up. "–I just want to see you with every privilege, every advantage that your father and I worked so hard to get you. But maybe you're right. Sometimes I lose track of what you want, and get too focused on what I would want. And I can see that that hurts you. You've made your point, Regina."

Anger sparks hot up her spine at that.  _She's made her point_  – it makes her sound childish and petty. Like she's been stomping her feet and holding her breath instead of taking the necessary measures to guard her own mental health.

"I wasn't throwing a tantrum, Mother," she mutters bitterly. "Whether I like it or not, you have a very strong pull on me," she admits, "And when you cut me down, it hurts. Deeply. More than I ought to let it. It's unhealthy for me. And I have to take care of myself, and my son, and if that means I can't see you, then that's what it means. I didn't stay away to prove a point; I did it because I needed... to protect myself."

"From me?" Cora asks, breathlessly, like she's wounded just by the words, and Regina feels guilt, and then immediate anger at the impulse. She's not the one who should feel guilty. "Oh, sweetheart, I'm so sorry," she says, and she means it. Regina can tell… can hear… She means it. She really is sorry this time. She went too far, pushed too hard, and she's… sorry. "I didn't realize how hurt you were, not until my birthday came and went with nothing but those flowers – they were beautiful, by the way. Just gorgeous. Gorgeous like my little girl." Shit. No. Shit. Regina shuts her eyes (they're wet, goddamn it), tension unwinding in her chest even though she knows better. "I missed you, Regina. Being ignored on my birthday, that hurt, but I finally understood just how wrong I'd been. And I really do want to try to make things right. What can I do? Tell me, sweetheart, and I will do anything it takes."

"I don't know," Regina answers softly, because she doesn't, she truly doesn't. She feels… she  _feels_. All sorts of jumbled emotions, but they're strong and squeezing, and she wants that, too, more than anything. She wants a ceasefire. Wants to see her mother's name pop up on her phone and not feel dread.

"Maybe… Could we start again?" her mother asks, sounding sincere and penitent, and Regina's breath whooshes out because she doesn't know how to fix all of this, but maybe they don't have to. Maybe they can try to just leave it in the past and start over. Maybe they can do that. "Could you forgive me, and start again?"

Can she? She doesn't know.

She can. She will. She always does. She always breaks first, but at least this time it feels less like breaking, more like bending. She's gotten an apology – more than one – and an acknowledgement of her pain, an actual honest-to-God acknowledgement of blame from her mother.

So… yes. Okay. Yes. She can try. If not for her mother's sake, then for herself. For her own heart, she will try.

"I think I'd like that," Regina says, and then it's done. She's accepted. She's given her mother a free pass to walk right back into her life, but maybe this time it will be different. Maybe this is the beginning of a good phase. Maybe she'll get weeks, months, years of something next to normal.

She hears her mother's relieved breath on the other end of the line, and can hear the smile in her voice as she says, "Good. Maybe you and Henry can come for dinner this weekend," and no. Nope. They will not be doing that.

Regina's almost surprised by the vehemence of her emotional response to the idea, by the firm refusal of her gut, but she knows that if she's going to fix things with her mother, if things are going to be different this time, they cannot just go back to the way they were. And she won't walk back into the site of their last bit of emotional carnage like nothing has changed. Forgiveness and change, those things have to be earned, and love her mother though she does, she doesn't trust her.

So she tells her, "No, not yet," and then, "Coffee. You and I, Saturday afternoon. We'll go get coffee, and we'll catch up. There's this little place by work I think you'd like." Somewhere neutral. Somewhere they can't let their tempers blow up and get the better of them. "If that goes well,  _then_  maybe dinner. Later."

"Alright," Cora agrees, but Regina can hear the edge of hesitation in her voice. Somehow it takes until that moment for Regina to truly realize that she's running the show now. Her mother has come crawling back to  _her_ , her mother needed permission back into  _her_  life, and Regina feels the last of the tension bleed out of her shoulders at the little revelation. Her terms now. She's in the driver's seat.

And because the balance of power seems to have shifted, she makes a few more demands, "But if we're going to try again, Mother, I need two things from you. Two things that are off-limits, at all times."

"What's that, dear?"

"We don't talk about my weight. No comment about the fit of my clothes, or if my jaw looks less defined, or have I put on a few pounds or is it just my sweater. My body is off-limits." Because she's having a hard enough time right now as it is. Stress plummets her appetite into her shoes – not quite the way her mother does, but it's detrimental just the same – and she knows that if Cora starts to nitpick right now, when her heart is already raw, she'll struggle to eat a full plate. And she won't have that. "And so is Henry."

"I can't talk about my grandson?" Cora questions, a bit of a scoff to the way she says it, like Regina is being completely ridiculous.

So she clarifies, "We can talk about Henry, but choose your words carefully, Mother. My son means more to me than anything in this life, and I will not let anything or anyone – not even you – harm him. Even if he's not there to hear it; I won't stand for it."

"Of course. That's a feeling I understand all too well, sweetheart," Cora tells her, and Regina tries to take it for what she knows it's meant to be – a declaration of love – and not for the terribly ironic lie that it feels like.

"I'll see you Saturday," Regina says, her way of ending the conversation. Thankfully, her mother takes the out, says her goodbyes and ends the call, and Regina is left sitting there, staring dumbly at the black screen of her cell phone, rubbing at the smudge of foundation left behind by her cheek.

Did that really just happen?

She thinks she should feel something about the whole thing… relieved, or skeptical, or… something. But she finds oddly that she doesn't. She just feels numb. Hollowed out.

Her gaze flits past the clock on the DVR, and she's surprised to find it's already quarter to eight. Robin will leave soon.

Robin will leave soon, and she told Henry they could make a batch of cookies after his lesson tonight. Something she can't do if she starts a run now, so she breathes out a sigh, and pushes herself off the couch, slides her cell phone into her pocket and moves from den to kitchen.

She busies herself with prep work – setting some butter out to soften, wiping down the KitchenAid (it's been a while since they used it, and who wants dusty cookies?), pulling out flour and sugar and a fresh bag of chocolate chips.

It's not nearly enough to distract her from the presence of the man in the next room, but at least it keeps her busy.

**.::.**

He hasn't seen her in nearly a month.

That's not true. He's seen her, has said hello and goodbye, and "Would you mind terribly if Roland came over for a bit? He says he wants to tell you all about his new pet goldfish."

But he hasn't really  _seen_ her.

She haunts the house while he's there – a phantom presence made known by the creak of floorboards, or the steady sound of trainers on a treadmill belt, the bang of a washing machine door as it closes a bit too hard. But it's not like it was before, and that's his fault.

He knows it is, and he knew this would happen, someday. Was bound to, if things kept going the way they were. He'd known it was coming, but he hadn't expected to feel so much like a piece of him was missing. She'd ingrained herself in his life, his routine, so smoothly that he hadn't even realized how deep the roots had burrowed until she'd been unceremoniously yanked out by his own rash deeds.

So tonight, when he finishes with Henry (who knows something is up, he's not a dumb child by any means, and he's distant in a way he wasn't before, pulling back from Robin ever so slightly, and that's a fresh ache too), and hears her puttering about in the kitchen, he can't resist approaching before he packs his things to go.

"Regina?" he asks, with a knock on the frame that leads from sitting room to kitchen.

She startles a little, and turns, and good God on high she's so bloody gorgeous. He's seen her, but he hasn't really  _seen_ her, and he misses her face. Misses the way she wears her emotions there, even now when she's trying to be neutral, polite. He can still see it in her eyes. The hesitation, and anger, and pain. He'll take the little nip of guilt he gets from the sight of her without complaint; small price to pay.

"Robin," she greets in kind, and then before he can say anything else, "How was his lesson?"

"It was good," Henry answers, pushing into the room around Robin, knocking him a pace forward. It's a more aggressive move than he'd expect from the lad, much bigger than his little hints of sullenness during his last few lessons.

"Henry," Regina scolds mildly, her brow pinching. "We don't push people in this house."

"It's alright," Robin dismisses, but she shakes her head, scowl deepening.

"No. It's not." She sets aside the dish towel she'd been holding, then steps close to her son, cupping his cheeks in her palms, and speaking gently. "Listen to me. What happened between me and Robin–" Henry interjects an  _I knew it!_  as Robin's stomach swoops with nerves at what she might say. "–is between me and Robin. I love you, and I love that you want to be protective, but you don't need to be. And it's okay to like him," she tells her boy with a little smile. "I know you want to. You don't have to be mad at him for me; I can handle that all on my own."

He's no doubt of that… Robin thinks, shoving his hands into his pockets for lack of anything else to do with them.

"Now, go upstairs and wash up," she orders, leaning in and dropping a kiss to Henry's brow, then stepping back, letting her hands fall. "We have cookies to make."

"I'm clean," he shrugs, and Regina gives him a pointed look.

"Henry, please go upstairs."

Comprehension dawns, and Henry looks between Robin and his mother, then turns with a sigh and walks out of the kitchen. They both wait for his footfalls on the stairs before speaking, and it's Robin who breaks the silence.

"Thank you for that," he tells her. "But it really wasn't necessary. It's a boy's right to defend his mother."

"It's not a boy's right to be rude while doing so," she tells him, her voice clipped much the way it was in the days after they first met. He misses the softer side of her, the warmth. She reaches for that dish towel again, sets about folding it. Doesn't meet his gaze, and she looks… tense. Pensive.

"What did you tell him?" Robin wonders – has been wondering, ever since that night.

"I didn't tell him anything," she sighs. "Not about us, or… Not until just now. But he's perceptive."

"And you've been avoiding me." He regrets the words as soon as they pass his lips, because she has every right to not want to see him, and he has no right to accuse. He winces, shakes his head, starts to take it back, but she beats him to the punch.

"Yes," she shrugs. "I have. I needed time."

"Needed?" he asks, a little spark of hope igniting in his chest.

"Need," she clarifies, and it's just as suddenly extinguished. "But I hate this. We can't change it, and trying to avoid each other…"

She trails off and he fills in the blank, can't help himself: "Sucks."

It gets him a half-hearted smirk, and a nod. "Yes. So… let's just try to be friends? If we can manage that."

"I'd like that very much," he tells her, and he'd like nothing more. Would love nothing more than to keep her friendship after everything, all of it. He doesn't deserve that, but oh how he'd love it.

She nods, and sucks in a breath, blows it out, drops that towel to the countertop again and presses a hand over her belly, her gaze sweeping the room as she asks, "And since we're friends, is there any chance you could have Henry over on Saturday afternoon?" Well, that's quite a jump – from the cold shoulder to a request for childcare. But then she's looking at him again, her eyes turbulent. "I'm having coffee with my mother."

Robin's brows lift, and immediately he feels the need to protect her. Not his place anymore, he reminds himself, and never was.

"I thought you weren't speaking," he says, but then a lot can change in a month, he supposes.

"We weren't," she shrugs, and then she sighs, a great weary thing, and says, "But she called tonight, and apologized for everything, and she wants to try to… fix things."  _Sure, she does_ , he thinks darkly,  _And he's the bloody Pope_. "So, coffee."

She looks… a bit lost. Unsure, and anxious, one hand pressed to her belly in that way he'd noticed she does when she's upset. Robin itches to soothe her.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asks, and she shakes her head immediately.

"No," she tells him, but then her gaze is raking him, up and down, over and over, and with each pass she looks more pained. When she says, "I just want to bake cookies with my son," her voice goes sparse, not wet, but  _hurt_ , he's hurt her; it's not just Cora, it's him, he knows it is, and the urge to go to her, to wrap her up in his arms and cover her in apologies and soft kisses has him aching with the effort of restraint. When she adds, "I just want to be with my son," he swallows hard, and nods, tells her he'll go.

Because he knows it's what she needs, what she wants. He's hurting her just by standing here, reminding her of what a useless sod he is.

"Henry can come by any time," he tells her, "Saturday's fine, just send him over when you head out."

She murmurs a thank you, and turns her back on him, reaches for that towel again and refolds it.

Robin takes a half second to absorb the sight of her, just in case she starves him of it again, and then he goes.


	19. Chapter 19

Regina shows up with Henry at ten-thirty on the dot Saturday morning, and if he didn't know her as well as he does now, he might not even see the anxiety pouring off her. But he does know her, and so he does see it. He sees it in the depth of each breath she takes, in the tight edges of her smile, in the way she tucks her thumbs into the pockets of her aubergine dress (stylish, sleek, something her bloody mother would approve of, he bets – and perfectly, but subtly, accessorized). She thanks him for letting Henry crash his weekend with Roland for a few hours, and he tells her not to worry about it, that the boys get along famously and it's no trouble.

They're already yammering on in the living room, Roland showing Henry his new fire truck with the extendable ladder, and Henry acting as though he cares just as much as Roland does about the whole thing. Which he well may, one can never tell with a boy raised to be so polite.

"You look gorgeous," he tells her, keeping his voice low enough that the boys won't hear. He wants to bolster her, to make her feel beautiful the way he knows his compliments once used to, but everything has shifted now, everything has changed, and so his compliment makes her frown this morning. And her frowning makes him stammer. "I mean – I didn't – I know–" He takes a breath. "It's a good color on you, is all I meant. I wanted to pay you a compliment."

She nods, that thin smile back in place, and tells him, "Thank you," her fingers patting absently against her pockets, thumbs still firmly planted inside. "I should get going. I shouldn't be more than a couple of hours, if even that. And if you want to order a pizza or something, I can–"

She's reaching for her purse as if she's going to pull out cash, and he doesn't need it, not from her. Work is going well, tips are good; he can certainly afford a single sodding pizza. And he's taken enough from her recently (and her family not so recently). He doesn't want a single red cent.

"I've got it," he assures, holding up a hand to wave her off. "I can take care of lunch. And don't rush back on our account; if you need a bit of quiet, he can stay as late as he'd like. Roland's been excited to play with Henry since I told him last night."

He hates the look she's giving him. Half strangled pain, half irritation. "I can handle a coffee date with my mother; I won't need an afternoon to recover."

She might, though. He knows that, and so does she, even if her pride won't allow it.

Robin shrugs a shoulder then, and leans against the door as he says nonchalantly, "All I'm saying is you've childcare for the rest of the day if you want it. Get a manicure, or a massage or something. If you'd like. Or come straight back, no skin off my nose either way."

She looks at him again, stares for a moment, something intense but guarded, and then she tells him, "I'll be back by one," and says her goodbyes.

He watches her take the stairs, and then the walk, watches her head back toward her own home, and then he finally turns back to their boys.

**.:.**

She's running late.

She's not really – she has five more minutes, but Mother is always early, and arriving after her might as well be arriving late. And on top of that, the small lot in front of Grumpy's is full (she sees Cora's car as she drives past), so Regina has to park two blocks away on the street. And it's hot. Not sweltering, not humid enough to have her sweating from such a short walk, but warm enough that she hopes she's not about to hear snark about choosing coffee for their little get-together in the height of summer.

Her belly is already twisting with nerves –  _she_  likes this place, comes here now and then for lunch (they have an organic veggie and hummus sandwich on spelt bread that is particularly delicious, and do a great gluten-free, refined-sugar-free pumpkin loaf in the fall), but she's starting to wonder if Mother will. It's full of healthy options, a tea selection the British Empire would swoon at, single-origin coffees that are full-bodied and delicious, and soy, almond  _and_  coconut milk in addition to the usual skim, whole, and cream.

But it's… homey. Plush chairs and mismatched tables, and the occasional coffee ring from a sloshed red eye gone too long without being wiped up. It's one of the things Regina likes about it, but Regina is not her mother, and maybe she should have suggested somewhere a bit more… sleek.

Stepping through the doors brings the sweet relief of air conditioning, the warm smell of high-quality espresso grounds, and the welcome sight of a smattering of empty tables. Regina says a prayer of thanks that the place isn't packed this morning – at least they'll have some privacy.

It takes only a second for her to spy Mother sitting along the nearly-abandoned left wall (at one of the higher tables without the comfy chairs, and of course, because why would either of them want to be comfortable for this?), a fat, red mug already in front of her on the table. She sits statue-straight, and what Regina has always considered to be unnervingly calm, her eyes trained on Regina already. No doubt she'd been watching the door. Waiting.

Regina feels a punch of nervous energy sour her gut as she waves hello with a palm that's suddenly damp, then points to the counter, a silent indicator that she'll order and then join her.

Cora nods, and Regina swallows against the dryness in her mouth.

"What'll it be today, sister?" Leroy asks as she steps up to the register. "The usual?"

"Not today," she sighs, squinting at the menu board (and then immediately schooling her features neutral, because  _Don't squint, Regina, it's unattractive_.)

"You here with that one?" he asks, voice low, eyes darting toward Cora, the doubtful growl of his voice telling her all he needs to know about her mother's first impression.

"She's my mother," Regina murmurs back. "Was she rude?"

"Polite enough," he shrugs. "But a shit tipper for someone with such a high maintenance drink order."

Of course she was.

Regina orders, and when Leroy tells her with his gruff brand of sympathy that this one's on the house, she stuffs enough money in the tip jar to cover her own drink and then some.

**.::.**

"So what'd you do to my mom?"

Roland has left the room for only a moment, just long enough to use the loo, and Henry is on Robin as soon as the younger boy is out of earshot. He shouldn't be surprised, he supposes. Regina may have given her son the go-ahead to think well of Robin if he so chooses, but what young man wouldn't want to know what someone had done to slight his mother? Henry's righteous indignation seems to have abated, but there's a cool protectiveness to the way he eyes Robin now, arms crossed, chin lifted, his stance and expression eerily reminiscent of the woman who gave birth to him. Regina's son, through and through.

Still, he knows Regina well enough now to know that she'd not want their business aired, and least of all to her son, so Robin tells him kindly, "What happened between–"

"You and my mom is between you and my mom?" Henry cuts in, exasperation warring with annoyance on his face.

"Yes," Robin answers, trying not to smirk at the lad. Clearly this isn't the first time Henry's had this conversation (probably won't be the last, knowing the tenacity of the boy's curiosity).

"She's my mom."

"I know that," Robin confirms with a slight nod.

"And she doesn't have anyone to protect her but me." Henry puffs up a little at the declaration, and Robin feels something inside him grow cracks and bleed a bit at the notion that this woman he so cares for needs protection from him. But she does; he'd hurt her. He has no plans to do it ever again, though, and Henry deserves to know at least that.

"You needn't worry about me and your mum," he assures Henry. "I made a mistake, and it hurt her, and to be quite frank, I hate myself for it. I've regretted hurting her every day since it happened. I wish I could undo it; I wish I could be someone who protects her too, instead of someone who caused her pain." Henry is studying him skeptically, eyes narrowed, and Robin reaches a hand out on impulse, gives the boy's arm a light squeeze and then tells him, "I care very much for your mum. And for you. And I know you're curious and you want to protect her, but I also know your mum wants to keep this between the two of us."

Henry slumps a little at that, plunking down onto the end of the coffee table with a frown that's more of a pout now than a scowl.

"I just wish I knew how to help her when she's sad," he admits quietly, a melancholy self-disappointment coating his words and making Robin feel even more like shit. He's hurt both of them with his lies, this woman he adores and her son he's grown so fond of, and staring the evidence of it in the face makes self-loathing settle thick and cloying in his lungs.

But he's the adult here, and Henry's the child, and far more in need of comfort – endlessly more deserving of it. So Robin manages a wan smile and leans in closer, his voice low as he says, "Can I let you in on a bit of a secret? For parents, sometimes when we're sad, our children don't even have to do anything to help. They help just by being there. You're everything to your mum. All you need to do is be you, and you'll help her feel better. The rest just takes time."

Henry's face screws up a little, his head tilting like he thinks maybe Robin is feeding him a load of bull. But he nods slowly, and then Roland is bounding back into the room, pleased as punch that he's managed to handle toilet time without a drop of assistance, and shortly after  _that_ , the doorbell rings to signal the arrival of their pizza, and the heaviness of moments ago is forgotten in the mild chaos of lunch with two young boys and a pepperoni-loving mutt.

**.::.**

The chairs are metal –  _metal_  – and since when does Grumpy's even have metal chairs? The only saving grace is the bar conveniently placed at just the right height so that she can hook her heel over it and not have her legs dangling like the child she's trying so hard not to feel like she is. Here, alone, with Mother. Just the two of them, no buffer, no Henry, no Daddy, no nothing but them.

 _Talking_.

This may have been a horrible idea.

Regina sips her drink (it's hot, and she's hot – saving grace number two of this awful chair is that she can still feel the coolness of the metal seeping through her dress to the backs of her thighs), and fights the urge to fidget, the compulsion to chew the lipstick off her bottom lip. They've already exchanged pleasantries – the  _hello_ s, the  _Sorry I'm late_ , the  _Nonsense, you're just on time_. She'd even managed to earn a  _You look lovely, sweetheart, that color flatters you_ , but they seem to have fizzled for actual conversation. Five minutes in, and they have nothing to say to one another. She hopes, desperately, that she and Henry never come to this.

"How was your holiday?" Mother finally asks, and Regina runs her thumb along the baby blue handle of her mug, looks up at her mother's face. She looks… interested. She's looking at Regina, really looking at her, and waiting for her reply. She's… trying. Mother is trying, and Regina is sitting here fretting, and it's not doing anyone any favors.

So she takes a breath, and smiles, and tells her mother, "It was good. I've talked about Kathryn before – from work?" Cora nods and lifts her macchiato for another dainty sip. "She had a… thing."  _Eloquent, Regina_ , she thinks, correcting, "A block party, I guess. Burgers and sparklers and fireworks. We went there."

"Henry had fun?"

"He did," Regina answers, a small smile blooming at the memory of Henry tearing around Kathryn and David's front yard, chasing their terrier Freddy across the grass, a drippy Bomb Pop in one hand, unlit sparklers clutched in the other. "There were a bunch of other kids there, and he loves Kathryn's husband. They have a dog; I'm surprised he's not already begging for us to get one. Which we won't, of course, but he's already tried to talk me into it once..." She looks away for a moment, just a moment, attention drawn by the unmistakable sound of heavy ceramic cracking on wood flooring and Leroy's rather inventive string of expletives in response, and when she looks back Cora is… appraising. She's studying Regina, and finding flaws, eyes not quite narrowed but crinkling at the corners, lips pressed together. A look Regina knows all too well. Great. What now? Regina feels her hackles rise, feels her insides twist with irritation and dread as silence expands between them. "…What?"

Mother just shakes her head, smiling now, and saying kindly, "Nothing, dear."

But it's not nothing. It's never nothing. She knows that look; she's gotten it all her life. Cora is itching to say something, to make some remark, and the masochistic need to know what the hell she's done wrong this time gnaws at Regina's gut, works it's way up and out of her mouth until she's muttering tartly, "No. Just say it."

"Regina–"

"Say it," she encourages again, adding, "You know you want to."

It's probably her poor choice of venue, the classless language of the staff, the godawful high-backed metal stools they're perched on. That's what it will be, she bets – something about slumming it, about Regina's poor taste, and she swears to God if Mother says they should have just met at a Starbucks after the number of times she's disparaged the chain, Regina will burst a blood vessel and just give up on ever managing to do anything to Cora's mercurial satisfaction.

"Don't slouch," Cora tells her calmly, and only then does Regina realize she's been leaning slightly against the table – something she should have known better than to do when she's stripped away her mother's usual arsenal of complaints as conditions to this little meeting. She straightens her spine slowly, rolling up vertebra by vertebra until her posture is perfectly poised, irritation fixed firmly on her face. It doesn't get any better when Cora points out, "You asked." And she did. She did ask. "I wasn't going to say anything."

Regina nods slightly, kicking herself. "I know," she mutters, and then, "I'm sorry." She doesn't wait for Mother's approval, though, just inhales deeply to replace the toxic sludge of her feelings with clean, cool oxygen, and asks pleasantly, "What about you and Daddy? What did you do?"

"Oh, we went out to the Club, as usual," Cora says with a dismissive wave. They go every year to see the fireworks there, and usually Henry and Regina go with, so it surprises her not in the least when her mother adds, "People asked about you."

"What did you say?" Regina asks, lifting her latte and sipping.

She expects more venom than she gets in her mother's, "That you had other plans."

Regina nods slowly, sets her mug down gently, then says, "Thank you. I'm sorry if it caused any… embarrassment." She's not, but the words are somehow automatic.

"You're an adult," Cora dismisses. "It's no embarrassment to your father and I if you have your own life. Now, if we'd told them the truth – that you were refusing to speak to me – that would have been an embarrassment."

Regina looks down at her cup, her mouth tightening into a scowl. Don't bite. Do not bite.

"But mostly, it would have been painful," Cora says, and Regina glances up in surprise at the sincerity in her mother's tone. It sounds real, but she can never be sure. "Sweetheart, these past few months,"  _Not even two_ , Regina thinks, "I've realized just how much you mean to me,"  _It only took three and a half decades_ , "And I've missed you, so much. I know we've gone longer without seeing each other in the past few years, but watching your father walk out the door to meet you when you wouldn't give me so much as a phone call, well… That's a different kind of distance, and it's not one I want to repeat."

There are words on the tip of her tongue, words she wants to say, but she's not sure if they'll just make everything worse, if they'll set a bomb off right here on the tabletop between them and undo what little progress they've made. But they're here to talk, to try to mend things, and how can you fix the things you can't even acknowledge? So maybe candor is in order here. Maybe it's okay to speak her mind, even if it's ugly or hurtful.

Her brow scrunches, then smooths, and she takes a deep breath, heart thudding hard, fingers curled firmly around the warmth of her mug to hide the way they're trembling suddenly. When she speaks, she speaks slowly: "It was different for me. I love you, but... I didn't miss you. Not seeing you was a relief. I'm sorry, I know that's awful, but it's true, Mother. And it doesn't mean I don't want to try to fix our relationship, because I do, but when it's broken like this… I'm glad time apart helped you realize how much I mean to you, because to be entirely honest, the last time I walked away from you all I could think about was how certain I was that you had absolutely zero regard for me."

"Sweetheart, you know that's not true," Cora croons, her voice like store-brand honey, sweet and sticky and entirely unclear as to the purity of what it claims to be.

God, how can they do this? Fix this? There's no trust, not an ounce of trust, she is so terribly, horribly ripped apart inside, so riddled with scars from every other time she's stepped close again and been burned, and Mother is trying, she thinks Mother is trying, it seems like Mother is trying, but Mother is a good liar, and Regina is good at obediently swallowing those lies.

For a moment, a brief moment, she wishes for the simplicity of Robin – not that The Robin Situation is simple, far from it, but compared to  _this_ , it's a cake walk. Yes, he was a liar, but in retrospect not a particularly artful one, and at the end of the day, she thinks she knows his heart. His idiotic, boneheaded, lying, stupid heart.

But her mother? With Cora, she just doesn't know. Sometimes she wonders if the woman even  _has_  a heart.

This was a horrible idea. It isn't even going that poorly, and still she feels sick, her coffee sitting sour in her stomach, her heart twisted up in knots, and she wants… She wants eggs and avocado and berries and tea, and the smell of clean cotton under the ever-pervasive aura of draft beer and cologne. She wants comfort, and there's none of that for her, not here at this table with her mother, not home in her empty house (it's not empty, Henry is there, but a ten-year-old can only do so much about things he's too young to understand).

"I'm sorry for making you feel that way," Cora says, and Regina realizes with a start just how long she's been stewing in the mire of her own thoughts. "I never meant to. I didn't realize how sensitive you were to my… observations."

See, okay,  _that_. That's not true. Cora knows, of course she knows, it's why she does it, and Regina lets her eyes drop closed and takes a deep breath. Maybe she needed more of a break, maybe it was too soon to deal with her mother, on top of everything else in her life right now. Maybe she should call her old therapist when she gets home, make an appointment or two, and then try this again. She should definitely take Robin up on his suggestion of an afternoon at the spa. So much for being able to handle one coffee date with Mother.

She needs to say something. She needs to say  _something_ , but her tongue feels like it's superglued to the roof of her mouth, her mind too full of things she can't say – can she? No, she can't, not unless she wants to turn this into an argument, and she doesn't, she really doesn't.

"Regina…" Cora begins, her voice tentative, as she says, "This isn't criticism, it's concern... but you don't look good, dear."

Great. Just great. She's not even keeping up appearances, and that just won't do, not for her and especially not around Mother, so she gives herself a mental shake and takes a calming breath. And smiles.

"I'm fine," she says, and hopes it's convincing.

"Regina, I'm your mother."

So no, then.

"It's just been a long few weeks," she excuses, lifting her mug and taking a deep swallow. It's not hot enough to scald anymore, not even close, but she takes in enough in one gulp to fill her mouth with warmth and feel it slide down to her belly.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Cora asks, and there's that maddening sincerity again.

Regina shakes her head, then finds herself saying, "There was a man. Didn't work out."

"Tell me about him," Cora invites without missing a beat, her tone casual, but interest clearly piqued.

Regina chuckles, shakes her head. It's a little late for twenty questions, and her mother is the last person she wants to know any particulars about Robin anyway. "You don't have to decide if you approve, Mother. It's over. Ended before it really even began."

Cora's head tilts, confusion coloring her features. She offers Regina a baffled little smile and asks, "Then why are you upset?"

Regina jerks a shoulder, looks at her mother, and admits what's been eating at her for weeks now:

"I'm lonely."

She feels tears well and hates herself for it, but then Cora is sighing sympathetically, muttering  _Oh, Regina…_  and reaching for her hand, squeezing. No more smile, no more anything but an expression that looks almost like solace. Her mother is offering her comfort and it cracks something open in her chest, makes her want to curl up against her and sob (and yes, she recognizes the irony of wanting to seek comfort in the very person whose wrath is most responsible for keeping her and Robin apart, and only minutes after she wanted to run out on this conversation altogether, but her relationship with her mother is nothing if not complicated), but they're in public and it wouldn't do to make a scene, so she just grip's Mother's fingers with one hand, wipes her own tears with the other and takes a deep breath to reign herself back in. If her exhale has a heavy hitch in the middle of it, well, Mother has the good grace not to mention it this time so Regina pretends it was never there.

"Sweetheart, if he didn't appreciate you, he's not worth a single tear," Cora tells her, and it doesn't help, not one bit, because Robin  _does_  appreciate her, this isn't about that, but she can't very well tell the whole complicated tale to the woman across the table from her, so she just nods and breathes, and breathes. "There are plenty of other men out there. I wish you'd let me set you up with–"

"No," Regina shuts that down immediately, swallowing thickly. She doesn't want her mother's prospects for her, never has. Much to Mother's frustration.

"Regina, honestly–"

"Mother, no," she tells her more gently. "I can find my own men. I don't want blind dates with eligible men from the country club."

"They'd take good care of you," her mother reasons, her thumb stroking along the tips of Regina's fingers soothingly, but she's pulling herself together now, she's almost composed. This Twilight Zone moment of her mother actually acting like a mother is drawing to a predictable close, so Regina draws her hand away and lifts her mug again to have something to do with it.

"I take good care of me," she says resolutely before sipping slowly.

"You could provide Henry with more," Cora argues, and Regina sighs internally. Her mother has latched on now, like a dog with a bone; she's not going to be letting this go easily. "A bigger house in a better neighborhood, prep school, an Ivy League–"

"Mother," Regina cuts her off warningly. "I don't want all the things that you want. I want my son to have a roof over his head, and food in his belly, and to be loved, and happy. That's it."

"You have him in private school," Cora points out, and Regina rolls her eyes.

"Yes," she clips, her mug hitting the table again with a thunk. "I do. You're right. So I want him to be sheltered, and fed, and loved, and happy,  _and_  get a good education. And have friends. And a level head." Cora sighs, displeased, but Regina keeps on talking. "I want him to be gracious, and humble, and kind. I don't care about prep school, or Yale – not unless he wants those things too."

"He's ten. What does he know?"

"I know," Regina counters. "I know what it was like to grow up the way I did, and I hated it." Cora's expression hardens just slightly, and that wasn't Regina's goal, an argument wasn't what she wanted out of this coffee date (this is more in the realm of debate and argument, but it's a fine line, could go one way or the other with a little push). So she gentles her tone as she says, "I love you and Daddy, and I'm grateful for everything you gave me, but I hated those girls, and I hated that school, and there was always so much pressure. To excel, to be perfect."

"And look where it got you," her mother tries to convince, with an encouraging smile.

Yes. Look where it got her. Drinking an almond milk latte because it seemed like the healthiest option after black, and despite the fact that Mother has agreed not to nitpick her body, Regina thought of her when she ordered. Didn't even order skim, just in case. She'd wanted to look like she was trying. Had wanted Cora to see she was trying. Cora hadn't even been at the register.

"Henry's a smart child – he's brilliant," Regina argues, pressing her palms to the sides of her cup and speaking clearly, firmly. Just the way Mother taught her. "He's creative, and he's funny, and he knows how to work hard. He'll go far; he'll be successful. But I don't ever want him to sit here like I am right now, trying to mend a broken relationship with his mother because I tried to make his life into my life. It's  _his_  life."

"You're his parent," Cora tells her quietly, but not without judgement. "Not his friend."

"I know." Regina forces herself to push back at the indignation she feels at Cora's tone – at her mother of all people trying to tell her how to be a successful parent (and what's new, really, but considering they can barely make it through a coffee date, she doesn't think her mother can claim authority on this particular subject). "And I will take care of him, and guide him, and nudge him in the directions I think are best. But I don't want him to feel like he has no control over the trajectory of his life. I want him to be independent." Before her mother can come up with some sort of retort, Regina adds, "And I don't want a lecture on parenting today, Mother. Or my love life. Let's just… talk about something else."

For a moment, there's silence. Cora sizes her up, studies and stares, and Regina feels very much like a bug under a microscope, but stays carefully neutral, outwardly calm, firm, assured. And then finally, Mother seems to break, relaxing and reaching for the handle of her cup again as she asks, "How's work, sweetheart?"

Regina breathes a sigh of relief – this topic, at least, she can handle.

It floats them through the next quarter hour, and it's easier to move on from there to other more mundane topics. It's not altogether torture – she might even go so far as to say that last little bit of the morning is almost pleasant, and when they part ways next to Cora's car, the hug she gives her mother is almost genuine.

She feels… better, she realizes. For all it's ups and downs, she thinks coffee was good for them, thinks maybe they should do it again. Thinks maybe this time, things could be different.

But that hint of cautious optimism isn't quite enough to keep her from stopping on the way home to indulge herself in a full spa mani-pedi. Robin did say he could handle lunch, after all...

**.::.**

Regina doesn't resurface until mid-afternoon, and when she does finally ring his doorbell, Robin finds the woman on his porch a far cry from the one who'd dropped her ten-year-old off there this morning. That Regina had been polished and presentable – wearing the same mask of professionalism Robin is used to seeing as she comes and goes from work. This is the other Regina, the weekend Regina. The Monday-night-post-lesson Regina, in casual white shorts and a cotton top that looks like it would be delightfully soft to the touch (the thought of which only reminds him that he can no longer touch her). Her face is bare of makeup, and her skin has a bit of a dewy glow to it. For someone who just spent quite possibly hours with a woman who terrorizes her for sport, she looks remarkably relaxed.

"Hi," she greets, her smile not quite what it used to be, but better than the nervy tension of the morning. "Sorry I'm so late."

"No apology necessary," Robin rushes to assure, giving a slight shake of his head as his hand settles on the outside doorknob for lack of anything else to do. The worn metal is warm against his fingers; the day has only gotten hotter as it's gone on, and he pulls the door shut a bit to keep the air-con in as he says, "The boys are in the middle of Mario Kart anyway."

She frowns then, but it's a pretty thing, one of those confused ones she offers with a tilt of the head. No heat to her, no criticism. They've gone a whole thirty seconds without intense awkwardness – a thought Robin dismisses as soon as it comes for worry of jinxing it.

"Is Roland even old enough to  _play_  Mario Kart?" she questions.

Robin drops his voice to confide, "He's quite terrible at it, to be honest – tends to take the scenic route, and drowns himself frighteningly often. But your son is very patient, and mine doesn't notice so much if I guide his fingers on the controller."

The laugh his confession earns is warm as the afternoon air and soothes something in Robin that has no right being soothed, least of all by her. Still, he finds himself smiling, giving her a quick once-over again before he can help it. How does she always manage to look so bloody gorgeous?

"You look rather more refreshed than I'd expect after lunch with your mother." He aims for mild, keeps his tone easy, hoping to extend this little reprieve they seem to be enjoying.

"Coffee with Mother, lunch by myself," she corrects, and then her smile grows, and she holds up a hand, wiggles her fingertips (now slicked with neat, glossy polish that starts white and fades into a soft lavender). "And then a mani-pedi and a facial."

So that explains it, Robin thinks with a grin, happy to hear she took him up on the suggestion to spoil herself a bit. A glance down at her sandaled feet finds her toes in a complementary solid white.

"Good," he says, and, "I like the purple."

She nods, her lips pressing together in a little, slightly tighter smile, and then those painted fingers are disappearing into her pockets, and their easy banter seems to fizzle without warning. He wants to ask about her mother, but isn't sure it's his place, isn't sure she'd want him to. And she… well, she could be asking for Henry, or asking to come in and spend time with the boys for a bit, but she does neither. Just stands there, until lack of conversation becomes a stretch of silence that grows ever more awkward by the second.

Robin's heart sinks – so much for improvement. He's about to bite the bullet and actually ask how things truly went (poorly enough to warrant a spa treatment – or was that just her taking advantage of his offer of time?), has even started to draw a breath, when she asks suddenly, "How were the boys this afternoon? Good?"

Right. The boys. The safe topic, he thinks. The thing they can talk about without having to think about themselves, or about how much of an idiot he is. Parenting, that's… easy enough. Today, at least.

"They were great," Robin tells her, his grip restless against the doorknob, his weight shifting to lean into the jamb, hoping to ease them back into something more casual as he elaborates, "We ate too much pizza, moaned a bit over our bellyaches, took Tuck to the park and let him run the boys ragged." A shrug, and then, "The usual."

One perfect brow (he wonders if she got those done too) lifts and falls, her smile back, if a bit more on the wry side now. Mission accomplished.

"I'm jealous," she drawls, and he wonders if she really is, or if she's just flirting. And if she's flirting with him now, when just this morning things were so painfully awkward (and when just a minute ago he worried they were headed for the same), he thinks he might have to throw spa gift cards at her left and right, eat nothing but noodles and spend every spare penny on ensuring she is regularly pampered and soothed into such an agreeable mood.

For now, though, he'll simply take advantage of this one, letting more of his weight melt into the wood at his side, and (since she's provided him a perfectly good opening) asking sympathetically, "Was it that bad, then?"

"It wasn't terrible," she concedes, smile melting into a mild grimace. "But it could have been better."

"She didn't make any more delusionally disparaging remarks about your figure that I need to dispel, I hope?"

"Not yours to dispel anymore," she reminds softly, and right. Right. Should've kept his mouth shut. But she doesn't actually seem too terribly put-out, despite the way her shoulders hunch in slightly, fingers pressing deeper into her pockets as she breathes in and out (he wants to reach for her, wants to draw her in and press kisses to her brow, stroke his hands over her back, but he cannot, he's not allowed, and he's an idiot, such an idiot for messing all of this up when he should have just been honest with her from the start). There's an intimacy to her voice when Regina admits, "She's not allowed to right now. I... told her my body is off limits. Part of my conditions of… all this. She can't comment on it."

"Good." He says it softly, but with conviction, having spent much of his afternoon with thoughts drifting at random to her in her kitchen, damp-haired and huddled in her robe, eating a late dinner bite-by-intentional-bite and weeping against his chest at the bruises her mother left on her ego, her heart. She's not his to worry about anymore, but that doesn't make a damn bit of difference.

He worries just the same.

Their eyes meet and hold, and for a second hers shift to an intensity that guts him, her jaw clenching then relaxing, lips pressing together hard, like she's biting down on them to keep something bottled inside and he doesn't want that, he doesn't want distance between them, and there's so much of it now. A chasm, deep and wide and impassable, and his fingers itch for her, his muscles zinging with the tension born of staying rooted where he is instead of stepping closer.

"Are you sure you're alright?" he asks, his hand leaving the door and making it a solid half foot in her direction before he forces it back, grips the metal more tightly.

"Yes," she insists, shaking her head slightly with eyes momentarily shut. When they open again, that intensity is gone, replaced with the veneer of dismissal she's trying so hard to sell. "I'm fine. It went well. I think… I think she's trying."

"I can hear your thoughts screaming from here," Robin says, because they've agreed to be friends, haven't they? And isn't that what they'd been then? That night in her kitchen, when he'd offered her comfort, they'd been no more than friends, so why should he not offer the same now? Why should he not answer her shrug with the words he wants to say – words he does say: "Regina, you know you can tell me anything. Talk to me about anything."

That hand leaves the door knob again, surer this time as it reaches out. But he barely brushes her shoulder before she jerks it back, away from him his touch, that intensity surfacing again with a vengeance as her brow scrunches, her head shaking back and forth as she insists, "Stop. Just stop."

His fingers fist loosely and drop obediently to his side, the murmured apology falling from his lips steamrolled by her near-pleading, "You can't do this, Robin."

"Do what?" he questions, because, yes, alright, perhaps touching her had been a bit of an unwise course of action but he doesn't think it warranted this sudden surge of anxiety, her arms lifting to cross over her chest, dark eyes going accusatory and God, so hurt, he's such a cad, such an idiot.

"Act like – like you didn't – like –" Regina halts her stammering, but he's gotten the picture, and these few minutes  _were_  too good to be true, and perhaps they're  _not_ friends after all, not yet, and he should have known better. All of that flits through his mind as she takes a deep breath, before asking, "Do you have any idea how hard this is for me? I opened up to you in a way that…" It's the betrayal in her gaze that cuts him deepest, the hurt underneath the simmering anger he knows she has every right to. "I  _trusted_  you. And you were lying to me. Keeping secrets from me, secrets  _about_  me, my family."

"I know," he tells her in hushed, contrite tones. "And I'm sorry."

There's a weariness to the way she says, "I know you're sorry. You  _should_  be sorry. What you shouldn't do is act like just because we're friends again we can just…" One hand untucks and waves between them, "go back to that. There are consequences to what you did, and–"

"Oh believe me, I know that," Robin bites, his temper rearing up for a moment unbidden. "The last six months have been nothing but bloody consequences for what I did."

She bites off every word of her volley, chews over them with all her bottled anger: "Well, who's fault is that?"

"Mine," Robin shoots back, knowing full well he's to blame here – they both know that. He doesn't need a lecture on consequences; he's been living his fucking consequences ever since winter saw him in a new home with a son he wasn't allowed to speak to. Her fiery  _You're damn right it is_  ratchets his ire up a notch, and he might have given in to the temptation to argue back if it weren't for the way her eyes are suddenly damp, her breath whooshing out heavily as her eyes shut, her throat bobbing with a heavy swallow.

The imminence of tears saps all his anger. Fuck. Please don't let her cry over this, not now when he feels he can't reach for her, when she's made it rather clear that's not something she's quite ready for.

But she doesn't cry, not really. Instead she asks with a weariness that twists in his gut (she'd been in such good spirits when he opened the door, and now she just looks defeated, and it's on him, her pain is once again his doing), "Can you just get Henry?"

Robin has no real choice but to nod, and tell her, "Yeah, of course," and step back inside, letting the door hang open so she's free to follow, or not. "Henry, your mum's here," he tells the older boy, who is now sitting right next to Roland, pacing him as he meanders his way through a course in dead last place.

"Okay, just a minute," Henry tells him absently, and Robin knows Regina has trailed him inside by the heavy exhale a few feet behind him.

"Henry, let's go," she urges firmly.

"But–"

"Now, Henry!" she tells him sharply, and the boy looks up, glances between the two adults in the room and frowns, then pauses the game and sets down his controller, telling Roland he'll see him soon and to keep practicing, he's getting really good. Robin very much doubts that, but the gesture warms his heart nonetheless, especially when a proud grin blooms on his son's face at the compliment.

When he stands, it's with a glower that Robin thinks is meant as much for him as for Regina's insistence on leaving before the boys' lap ended. A suspicion that's undeniably confirmed when Henry sidesteps Robin entirely (Regina, too, to be honest) on his way to the door, and clomps out of the house without so much as a goodbye.

Regina's "Thanks for watching him" isn't much more of one, and then she's gone too, shutting the door on Robin and leaving him to his son and his misery.

**.::.**

So much for a relaxing afternoon, Regina thinks stormily as she follows five paces behind Henry on the walk from Robin's place to theirs. Every bit of zen she'd managed to achieve while she'd been pampered and painted this afternoon has been squashed, leaving behind that dull ache she's been carrying for weeks.

It's not helped in the slightest by Henry stopping in their foyer and turning on her, arms crossed, face firm as he asks, "Did Robin do something dumb again?"

Regina does not have the patience for this. Not today, not now.

"Henry, I don't know how many more times I have to tell you that I don't want to talk about this with you," she tells him, trying to keep the simmering irritation (and choking misery) out of her voice, and mostly succeeding.

"Why not?" he questions, standing his ground and Regina is glad she'd already shut the front door or she might be tempted to slam it in frustration.

"Because it's private," she snaps, less successful at keeping herself even-keeled this time. "Now stop asking."

"But I'm your–"

"Henry Daniel Mills, I swear to God, if you don't drop the subject right this instant, you are grounded," she warns, temper kicking and simmering in her veins, her muscles, and it's harsh, an overreaction, she knows it as soon as she sees his face go surly, an expression she thinks he probably inherited from her ( _Don't frown so much, dear, you'll have wrinkles by forty_ , her mother used to scold).

"Fine!" he lobs at her with all the attitude a properly-raised grade schooler can muster and then he's stomping up the stairs.

Sneakered feet hit each step ( _bang-bang-bang),_  and it irks her that he's abusing the hardwoods just because she wants a little bit of privacy, she calls after him, "Take off your shoes, young man!"

They topple down behind him as he manages to somehow kick them off while still climbing the stairs and Regina sees red, just barely resists the surge of anger at his little show of disobedience, manages to keep her teeth clenched shut and restrain herself to swiping his sneakers off the lower steps they've come to rest on and throwing them onto the shoe mat in the corner with a bit more force than she needs to.

Even his socked feet are heavy down the hallway, and just before he slams his bedroom door with a resounding bang, he shouts down at her, "I just wanted to make sure you were alright!"

Guilt slams into her with the same force of Henry's door rattling in its hinges, and she feels those tears she was fighting on Robin's doorstep surge up and choke her, her eyes flooding, her throat constricting. The stress from this morning and this afternoon combining and swamping her.

Regina sinks down onto the bottom step and drops her head into her hands, silent sobs shaking her shoulders.

So much for her stellar parenting skills.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder to all my readers that if you are wondering about the status of a story or when to expect an update, or if you have any questions,etc., the quickest ways to reach me are twitter (SomewhereApart) or tumblr (someonethatiamnot). Thanks for all your enthusiasm for this story, and apologies for the delay between chapters - August was a very busy month for me, and a lot of home/life things were changing. Hopefully the next update will come much faster.

On his last birthday, Marian had presented Robin with a slim box wrapped in newsprint – it was a quirk of hers, one he had loved. Christmas gifts got fancy wrapping, but anything else was folded inside carefully snipped selections of the Sunday Times and this birthday had been no different.

Inside had been two Moleskine composition notebooks, and a pack of Blackwing pencils. He'd been working too hard, she'd told him. He'd needed the work, they'd needed the money, but his band had split long before and she'd smiled that sweet smile (he remembers the way it had made him feel to see it, but can't quite call up the feeling itself anymore, just a dim memory of love, tarnished now by everything that's happened between them over the last six months) and told him that just because they needed to be practical now didn't mean he should stop playing. Stop writing. She'd thought maybe some fresh "tools of the trade" would inspire his creativity.

He'd written a song for her that very night – a song  _about_  her, about dark hair and a honey voice and curves that would drive a man to make deals with the devil. He'd sketched out a few more – a chord progression here, some lyrics there, snatches of inspiration littering the first quarter of one notebook.

And then he'd had to hock his guitar, and they'd gone into storage. He could write without the instrument, but it was a bit like drawing with his left hand. It felt wrong, and came out wobbly, and so he'd tucked them away. Temporarily. Until he was flush again and could get the guitar back.

He'd been empty-handed until the night Regina had bought him the gorgeous instrument cradled against him at this very moment, and not a word had been written in the time between.

But it's Monday morning, and his son has been returned to his mother for the week. Robin has the whole day ahead of him and a heavy knot of tangled  _feeling_  in his chest. Writing had been therapeutic, once upon a time, and he's spent the last few weeks – since that night he confessed his sins to Regina – trying to unspool that knot. It hasn't come unstuck.

He has the instrument back, feels proper-handed again, so he'd pulled the notebooks from their box, carefully sharpened a pencil to a pristine tip. And nothing.

So now here he sits, another day, another failure. Staring at chicken scratch and scribbles, feeling none the better for the hour he's been attempting to purge himself onto the page.

It's just that I'm-a-bloody-bastard-who-fucked-over-the-one-good-thing-I've-had-all-year doesn't rhyme with much, you see.

And he could write about her, the good things, the parts he's so taken by – but all that does is make him miss her, and all missing her does is give him the itching urge to text or call, and she'd made it quite clear two days before that he doesn't have that right anymore. He wants to pick at the scab she's made of him, but it just leaves him bleeding, and sore and with nothing to show for it.

Where once every pang, every bit of yearning, every flush of romance had turned itself into notes and syllables, now there's just… nothing.

With a growl of irritation he shoves his guitar from his lap to the mattress, then flops back into his pillow and scrubs his hands over his face.

Bloody useless.

An exercise in torture.

He's lost his touch. Lost his talent. Maybe he's past his prime as an artist (maybe he never was one), and a bloody great time for it, too, what with August having called just last night to ask if he could juggle his week and play emergency cover for the band they'd booked for Thursday night. The lead singer has laryngitis, and August had thought maybe Robin wouldn't mind taking a turn on the stage. He could swap his Monday off for Thursday, dip his toes back into playing for an audience that doesn't consist of his child, or the neighbor's.

Robin had jumped at the chance, if for no other reason than to have something to focus on that isn't the ache in his chest. (If it meant he'd have to skip a week of lessons with Henry, well, all the better. And that's not cowardly, it's simply… giving Regina a week to breathe. A week without him in her space. That's all that it is.)

He'd meant to pour himself into writing – means to pour himself into writing – for the rest of the week, in the hope of having something new to play on Thursday. Something inspired, something good. Something he can feel in his bones.

So far, it doesn't look promising.

Telling himself it's only been an hour, and perhaps he's being a bit too hard on himself (he's not, he's talentless, he's bitten off more than he can chew and is about to make a right git of himself), he reaches for his iPhone and the headphones stowed on his nightstand. Maybe he'll go for a run, clear his head. Pick through his library for songs he can learn to cover in the next three days.

If he can't find it within himself to sort his emotions into something tangible, maybe he can let someone else speak for him.

**.::.**

Everyone has a weakness.

Something that takes one's normally strong resolve and bends it until it begins to crack. Sometimes it's a person who can get under your skin like no other, a drink you cannot put down even though you've already had one too many, a dollar you cannot resist spending or earning no matter the moral cost.

And sometimes, it's something much more innocent, much less damaging.

"Oh God, where did these come from?" Regina asks as she drops herself into one of the chairs around the break room table and reaches across to nip a mini Reese's cup from the full bowl in the center. She'd overindulged with Henry yesterday (a guilt brunch of stuffed French toast after the way she'd yelled at him the day before), so she'd intended to make Monday a lean day, but she's powerless against those little gold-foiled devils.

"No idea," Mal drawls, peeling the foil off her own candy and informing, "I walked in two minutes ago, and here they were."

"Well, whatever kind and generous soul is responsible, I'd like to both thank them and smack them," Regina mutters, carefully flattening the foil into a perfect square before plucking the peanut butter cup from the center and popping it into her mouth.

Bliss.

Sweet, salty, chocolatey, peanuty bliss. Some people have heroin; Regina Mills has peanut butter cups.

But only so many – only five. As Mal mutters,  _You and me both_ , Regina carefully lines up four more candies on the table. An indulgent snack, and then back to her desk. And maybe she'll skip the cream in her coffee this afternoon.

"So," Mal says slowly. Regina glances up from unwrapping candy number two. "What's wrong with you?"

One dark brow lifts. "Excuse me?"

"You have a good poker face, Regina, but it's not better than my ability to see through bullshit." One red-lacquered nail snags the edge of a spent wrapper and then Mal is rolling it up into a lazy ball, pressing it tighter and tighter. "You're… sulky."

"I do not sulk," Regina defends. "And you hate listening to other people's problems. You bitch every other time Kathryn opens her mouth."

"That's because she opens it every damn day," Mal dismisses, tossing the little foil ball to the table with a hollow rattle. "And then refuses to do anything about her shit. You, on the other hand. You keep your problems to yourself, and I respect that. So. Just this once." She nods, sending blonde hair (long and curled today) bobbing slightly. "Spill your guts if you need to."

Regina half considers it. Not everything, of course – not the full story, but the bare bones of it. Stupid men, stupid heartbreak, stupid parental issues. She considers, but then she thinks better of it. It's neither the time, nor the place.

"It's nothing," she says softly with a wrinkle of her nose and shake of her head. "Just… life. Men. Parents." Peanut butter cup number three is slowly stripped. "I yelled at my son this weekend."

Mal's brow lifts, and falls. A gesture of easy dismissal. "You and every other parent in Baltimore, I'm sure."

Regina lets out a dry chuckle. "True. But… some of those kids probably deserved it. Mine didn't. I was just mad." She glances up for a half-second and then back down at the wrapper in front of her, chocolate displayed enticingly, but looking much less appetizing with the taste of her own acid words on her tongue. "Not even at him, really. Just… mad. About other things. I feel awful."

"So apologize," Mal reasons, easy as pie. If only.

"I did that already," Regina sighs, leaning back in her chair and staring down peanut butter cup number three, still awaiting its demise. "And then I spoiled him a little. Didn't help." She shifts her gaze to the other woman and asks, "You don't have kids, right?"

"Definitely not," Mal drawls, sitting up and reaching for the candy bowl again. "But I did have parents, once upon a time. And I'd have done just about anything for an apology for even a tenth of the crap they pulled."

Regina lets out a grunt of agreement – she knows  _that_  feeling well. "They move on – kids. Most of the time, they get over it. But there's always that one thing, y'know? That thing that seems so small and insignificant when it happens – except to you. That one belittling comment, that one time you tried to do a caring thing and got shut down for it, and that hurt stayed with you. Forever."

"When I was four, I snuck into the neighbor's yard and picked a bunch of flowers off their lilac bush to give to my mom. She was allergic. And pissed that I stole."

"See?" Regina says, tilting her head. "Your mom probably doesn't even remember the lilacs, but you always will. What if for the rest of his life, he remembers the day that I yelled at him because he was trying to figure out…?" She trails off, shakes her head.

"What if he does?" Mal replies, her shoulders lifting and falling. "Nothing you can do about it now."

Regina's answering chuckle is hollow and entirely without humor. "I suppose that's true."

"Let it go," Mal advises, and then she eyes Regina for a moment, and confides, "I've seen you with your kid a time or two over the years. You're a good mom. Don't beat yourself up for not being a  _perfect_  mom."

Sound advice, Regina thinks, finally reaching out and grabbing that peanut butter cup, tossing it into her mouth and chewing. She doesn't have to be perfect. Henry will forgive her if she's not perfect. He already has.

"So men, huh?"

Regina chuckles around a mouthful of chocolate, swallows and then says, "Oh, I think we'll leave that one alone for now. I need something a little stronger than chocolate to get into  _that_  mess."

**.::.**

A long time ago, in the early years, before Roland, Marian used to joke that she relished Robin's writer's block. He'd not been terribly appreciative of the sentiment, but he couldn't fault her reasons: somewhere past everything-I-do-is-shit, he hits the complete-avoidance-of-work phase, and that's when she'd come over to find his apartment scrubbed from top to bottom, all the clothes clean, that ripped window screen fixed. If she was lucky, she might come home to find  _her_  place scrubbed top to bottom. He'd once even painted her living room. So yes, she'd appreciated his writer's block, in a way that he certainly never had.

Still doesn't.

But he's done sitting around waiting for inspiration to come. Granted, it's only Tuesday, he's not been waiting all that long (months, really, longer even since the last thing he really truly wrote that wasn't shit), but he's on a time crunch here. He's picked a few covers, things he knows and things that will be easy enough to learn by Thursday night, and he can pull some songs from his old repertoire, things he'd played with various bands over the years, but for some reason all those songs feel a bit… stale. A bit like old shoes that don't quite fit anymore, worn in the soles, scraping at the heels.

He wants something new. Wants to feel like he's actually a musician, someone worthy of a solo night singing anywhere in public. Not just some bloke with a guitar who used to be good at something.

So to that end, today's a day he's devoted to transformation. If not of himself, then of this room. The back room, on the first floor, the one by the laundry. The one he and John have stowed various and sundry rubbish in and shut the door on. He's a mind to turn it into a studio of sorts, somewhere he can keep his guitar (he's started saving for an electric, quietly, telling himself he'll use the money for something else if he needs to, but he'd like another guitar or two if he's going to be serious about playing again), somewhere he can write. Somewhere he can focus.

Of course, to do that, he has to relocate everything that's in here – or at least find some way to condense it. So he'd hauled out all the boxes and heaps last night, piled them into the hall (a right shock for John this morning, that's for sure) and he'd gone to IKEA bright and early, been there at ten AM when they opened, on two hours of sleep. Now he sits in a room empty of stuff, but full of promise and flat-packed boxes of pressboard. He'd bought bookshelves, the kind with big square cubbies he can fill to the brim with crap, let it pile up the wall like well-contained climbing vines and leave him a good bit of space for the small desk and chair he'd bought as well. He thinks he'll string a curtain across the room eventually, hide it all from sight.

For now, he's studying diagrams and counting and separating all the little pieces (an annoyance he'd just as soon skip, but he's learned his lesson before – starting in as though the Swedes' sense of design was straightforward and simple only to have to rip furniture apart because he'd put a piece on backward or was missing a peg or three). The task has him on his knees, and he's reminded by the ache of hardwood on joints that he's getting old. He's rarely felt old before the last year, but life's been less than kind to him and somehow he feels all that in muscle and bone. Tense knots in his shoulders, an ache in his left patella, the odd crunching of his spine into itself by the end of a long night's work at the bar.

We're all mortal, he thinks. We all start to deteriorate someday.

But he's not decrepit yet, he tells himself, sitting up and stretching, popping his back and then double-counting his pegs just to be sure. He has one odd skinny one, the wrong size thrown in (because nothing can ever work out perfectly, can it?), and he wonders if he can jam something else into the hole it's supposed to fit, or if it'll be alright as-is. One bad peg might not ruin the whole piece. He'll have to think of the least damaging place to put it.

Right then.

Work to do, things to build. A space to create that might foster some amount of creativity. (Maybe he'll put in a little play area for Roland's toys – they're out in the hall with everything else right now. No. No, this isn't a play space, it's a work space. He'll find something else to do with them…)

He's well into the work of tapping in pegs and placing in screws, stripped down to his vest (he's opened the window, letting in fresh air but letting out cold), when he hears the bang of the front door and Tuck's welcome woof, a familiar voice in answer.

Henry's back.

He's off school for the summer, and has been at turns all over the neighborhood and nowhere to be seen. Off on play dates, or summer classes, or whatever it is Regina has him doing at any given time. When he's home, he's under the watchful eye of Granny Lucas across the street – had been there just this morning, in fact, until he'd come knocking, asking if he could play with Tuck.

They'd been gone for a while, an hour at least, but Robin hadn't worried. He trusts boy and dog alike, and to be frank with the dog out of the house, he doesn't have to worry about – exactly what he's doing now, Robin thinks with a sigh as Tuck trots into the room and immediately sniffs at what's left of the bits on the floor.

"Hey," Henry greets, leaning on the doorframe. He's flushed with sun and exertion, a Coke in one hand that Robin is almost certain had been nicked from his own fridge just moments ago, and there's dirt on his knees and around his fingernails. Regina will be thrilled, no doubt. "What's all this stuff doing out here?"

"Can't well have it in here," Robin reasons, giving Tuck a little shove away from the pegs. "No room. Can you keep him off those for me?"

Henry nods and walks into the room, plopping down against the wall a few feet away and urging, "C'mere, boy!" Tuck goes dutifully, plunking himself next to his sometimes-companion and dropping his head into the boy's lap, tail wagging all the while, swishing across the floor. He's dirty too, Robin notices. What on earth have they been up to? Maybe he should trust them a little  _less._

Henry takes a deep swig of his Coke and Robin finds himself suddenly thirsty, the prospect of a cold beer sounding a bit like heaven. He has half a mind to send Henry after it for him, but the boy has just gotten comfortable, and he's not an errand boy anyway. It can wait until Robin's done with this piece.

"What are you building?"

Robin points to the instruction book, and says, "Storage. For all that." His head jerks toward the hall. "Decided to finally clean this place up a bit, so I can use it."

"Use it for what?"

"A studio," he says, feeling just as foolish as he had when he'd told John this morning, because what right does he have to a  _studio_. He's just a man with a guitar.

But Henry says, "Cool," as though it is, and takes another sip of his drink. Not an ounce of question aside from, "For your guitar and stuff?"

Robin nods, fits another peg. "I thought it might be good to have a place to work on my music, and we aren't really using this room." He glances up to find Henry looking at him, an odd sort of pinched look that reminds him very much of Regina. He's not sure what he's done to warrant it (what hasn't he done, lately?), so he offers, "You want to help?"

"Nah," Henry smirks. "Looks like a lot of work."

Robin snorts a laugh, thinking the kid's got the right idea. "Well, I might need an assistant in a minute, so if you're going to take up valuable floor space, you might need to put in some work."

"Fine." Henry gives in with a grin, and all too easily, so Robin thinks the original protest wasn't much more than the boy's usual level of resistance to him, ever since things went pear-shaped with Regina. To his credit, though, Henry hasn't tried to badger the truth out of him in the three minutes he's been in the house. "Tell me when you need me."

"Will do," Robin assures, intent on prepping each piece as much as possible before he calls on his assistant.

For a half a minute, there's quiet.

"Is it so you can do my lessons here?" Henry asks, his voice suddenly sounding young, the snark of moments before replaced with uncertainty. "So you don't have to see my mom anymore?"

Oh.

"What?" But he knows what, he doesn't need to ask that, so Robin shakes his head and immediately adds, "No. No, it's…" He exhales heavily, thinking maybe that's not such a bad idea after all, and then wondering if some subconscious part of him had already known. "This is for me." Henry nods, but doesn't say anything, and after a few moments of stretched silence, Robin asks tentatively, "How is your mum?"

They hadn't parted on terribly good terms, and he's left her alone since. Not his place to bother her, and she's right, he supposes. They can't act like nothing happened, and so Robin doesn't know how to act any longer.

"She's snappy," Henry tells him, and guilt lances sharp into his belly at the thought that what he did has brought her temper down on this kid. "But then she feels bad and makes really good food," he finishes with a shrug, and Robin can't help a melancholy little smirk.

She does make good food, Regina. And at least she's eating well.

"I remember," Robin murmurs. "I miss her cooking."

Another shrug, and Henry says, "Well then you shouldn't have done whatever dumb thing you did."

Robin's brows lift slightly. Too true.

He doesn't have anything to say to that, really, so he nods at the boards and says, "Come here and help me with this."

Henry sets down his Coke, scoots out from under Tuck's snoozing head, and does just that.

They get the first piece put together, and manage to lift it up and slide it against the wall without either of them straining something important (Henry's stronger than Robin expected for a boy who's not much into athletics, but it's still a bit of a one-sided job). Then Robin tasks Henry with the sorting and counting for the second bookshelf while he himself fills the first one with some of the things from the hallway. Roland's toys find a home in the lower corner, somewhere his boy can reach them himself. And then file box after file box finds its way into cubby after cubby.

He almost drops one when Henry asks, out of nowhere, "Do you love my mom?"

"I… what?"

It's a question Robin has been trying very hard not to dwell on himself – the answer won't solve anything. Won't change anything.

"Do you love my mom?"

Hazel eyes that must have come from the boy's father stare up at him, earnest, curious. Maybe a little bit accusatory. They'd been doing so well not talking about this…

Robin slides that file box into place and asks, "Henry, how angry do you think your mum would be if she thought I'd talked to you about these things?"

"I think if you talked about whatever you did to her, she'd be pretty mad," Henry tells him matter-of-factly. "But I'm not asking about that."

Sneaky little bastard.

Robin sighs, and regrets intensely not yet having grabbed that beer he'd been pining after.

"I don't see how that matters very much," he says carefully, headed back into the hall for another box – and, yes, a quick detour for that beer. When he returns, Henry's just where he left him, sorting bits of IKEA hardware and asking dangerous questions.

"So you do, then," he says, and Robin takes a deep swallow. "If you didn't, you'd say so. And you wouldn't have gotten a beer."

Robin freezes with said beer just an inch into its descent from his mouth. "I've been thinking about this beer since you showed up with Coke. I was just too nice to make you go get it for me."

"Uh huh," Henry says doubtfully. And then he continues, full steam ahead. "If you really do love her, you can work it out. Mom says true love can conquer anything. Except maybe dying. I know sometimes she seems kinda… She can be kinda mean and stuff, but she's a romantic. She cries at the ends of girly movies when she thinks I'm asleep."

Robin smiles, can't help it. He has the sudden image of Regina curled up on the couch, sniffling into a Kleenex because Julia Roberts has just told Hugh Grant she's just a girl standing in front of a boy asking to be loved, Henry sacked out on the other end of the cushions, pretending to be asleep. Probably a mostly empty bowl of popcorn between them, and a blanket on her lap, and Robin wants so badly to be a part of that. Of her life. For a moment, the… the  _yearning_  yawns deep and lonely inside him, and that smile freezes and pinches and fades.

Fuck, he  _is_  in love with her. No use denying it to himself, he's well aware, no matter how much he might try to deny it. He's spent weeks, months, trying to talk himself out of her, trying to get just close enough but not too close, not enough to hurt her, hurt them, but he's failed. Miserably, on all accounts. She's wormed her way into his heart, conquered it entirely, and now he can't bloody have her, and it's his own damn fault.

And Henry can see it written all over his face – he  _must_  see it, because he's smirking now (and  _that's_  certainly a look he gets from his mother).

"See? You can fix it." He nods, all confidence, and Robin rakes a hand through his hair, shakes his head.

"Did you double-count those screws?"

"Oh come  _on_." Henry practically flops onto the floor, exasperation incarnate. "You're as bad as she is! I'm trying to  _help_  you guys, don't you see that?"

Robin takes another swig of beer, trying to figure out how best to get them the hell out of this conversation. In the end, he settles for something honesty-adjacent, if not outright truth. He crouches in front of Henry, looks him square in the eyes. "Your mother trusted me, and I betrayed that trust. It doesn't matter how, or why. All that matters is that I hurt her, deeply, and it's very, very, very unlikely that we will ever be more than friends. How I feel doesn't change that. Not everything can be fixed by just loving enough."

"But you could try," Henry suggests, rolling a peg back and forth between his fingers. "You're not even trying, you're just mad at each other–"

"Henry," Robin interrupts. "Some things can't be undone. I know you're just trying to help, but your mother's hurting, and I'm hurting, and neither of us wants very much to talk about it. So please. Stop pushing."

The boy's face has fallen, determination and hope fading to disappointment and a hint of hurt feelings. "You're just gonna give up?"

Robin's fingers tighten on his bottle, his throat bobbing thickly, and he makes a point to keep his tone gentle. He doesn't want to send Henry home upset – it wouldn't do to upset Regina any more than he already has, and Henry shouldn't carry their burdens.

"I'm going to give your mum the space she needs – the space she's asked me for – so that she can sort out how she feels." He shifts a little on the balls of his feet, reaches out to settle a hand on Henry's shoulder. "And I'm sure she'd probably appreciate it if you did the same."

Henry looks around the room then, tossing the peg back onto its pile (it rolls a good two feet along the floor and Tuck's head pops up, eyes trained on it, ears cocked). "What if I don't want to have my lessons here?" His chin tips up, defiant.

"That hadn't even crossed my mind until you mentioned it," Robin assures, standing up on knees that creak ever so slightly and stepping over, rolling the peg back into its pile with the toe of his shoe. "I'm cleaning this place up so I can try to write some music."

"You need a special room to do that?"

"Seems so," Robin sighs, lifting the beer to his lips again and muttering, "None of the other rooms are working," before taking another quick sip.

"Are you gonna write about my mom?"

Good Christ, he's like a dog with a bone.

"Probably," Robin gives in, because trying to avoid the topic isn't bloody working, now is it?

Henry nods at that, a new determination springing up as he says, "Okay then. Time to get to work."

He's all business after that, helping Robin place hardware and slot boards, and he's sure Henry thinks getting him to write again will get Robin one step closer to whatever fairy tale romantic reunion Henry has in mind for them. But he's dropped the subject, and Robin won't bring it up again, not even to dash the boy's hopes. The second bookshelf comes together more quickly than the first, and this time he lets Henry help him carry more stuff in from the hallway to fill the cubbies. There's one more piece left to build, but Robin's stomach is growling, and he's sure Henry's must be too, so he doesn't reach to unpack the last box.

Instead, he stands back and admires the day's work, hands stuffed into his pockets. Henry stands next to him, much the same. Not a bad job, if he says so himself. A good deal more ordered, and a lot of space saved. With that last bookshelf, he thinks the floor will be mostly clear. Things are coming together.

"We did good," Henry says with a nod that's almost comically sage and satisfied.

"That we did. Thank you for your help. I don't know that I could've done it all alone."

"Probably not," Henry smirks, and Robin chuckles, shaking his head before his stomach gives a low, hollow rumble.

He presses his hand to it, and turns to look at Henry.

"Did Mrs. Lucas feed you, or do you need lunch?"

His face goes from satisfied to bright-eyed in an instant, though his words are deceptively nonchalant. "I could eat. Pizza?"

Robin snorts, slinging an arm around the boy's shoulders and telling him, "I'm starting to think you're made of pizza." Henry grins, unabashed. Still, man cannot live on pizza alone. Nearly so, he thinks honestly, but his guilt over Regina informs even the little things today, and so he's loath to stuff her son with something he knows she considers nutritionally subpar. "Let's see what we have first."

As it turns out, what he has is a terrible need to go grocery shopping. The fridge has Coke, beer, a few oranges, some eggs past their date, expired Chinese takeout, and a dubious half-block of cheese. The cupboards yield little more than crisps (several bags of that), a few old tins of soup, and spaghetti noodles but no sauce. He reaches for something, holding it out to Henry with a doubtful expression.

"Beefaroni?"

Henry makes a face.

"Yeah, I agree," Robin mutters, settling it back amongst its mates. "Why don't you go tell Mrs. Lucas we're going to run some errands. We'll stop for something while we're out."

Henry tears off for the front door without another word, and Robin swallows down the last of his beer (warm now, but could be worse) and reaches for the notepad and pen on the top of the fridge, jotting down a list of necessities.

It's domestic, productive. He feels productive today, if not creative. And he'll take that. It's a start.

The best he can hope for.

**.::.**

It's ten past seven on a Tuesday and Regina is on her way to a bar.

To pick up her son.

Her ten-year-old son.

She wants to be annoyed, but she's not. Not really. She'd told Henry she didn't mind him spending time with Robin, and she'd meant it. She doesn't mind – she doesn't want to demonize the man, not to her son, not when she knows that Robin is, at his core, a decent man (a novelty Henry doesn't exactly have a glut of in his life). And she knows that however much Henry likes Granny Lucas, spending all day every day with her holds much less appeal than spending some of his summer with the man he so admires.

So no, she didn't mind discovering that he'd spent most of the day with Robin, or that he'd gone along with him to run errands. She doesn't even mind, not really, that they hadn't been paying attention to the time and had ended up having to rush straight to the Rabbit Hole in order for Robin to make it to work on time (she thinks it's a touch irresponsible, but she doesn't really  _mind_ ). It's early on a weeknight. The place is less likely to be crawling with inebriated frat boys than it is families trying to take in burgers and an Orioles game.

No, what she minds is having to see Robin at all.

Maybe it's small, maybe it's petty, maybe it's cowardly. But the last thing she wants after a long day of work is to get that sucker-punched feeling in her gut when she sees those dimples, that knee-melting smile, and hears his  _voice_  and remembers that she doesn't get to want him anymore. Or at least, she doesn't get to have him. It makes her angry and depressed and, yes, okay, maybe Mal is right –  _sulky_. She'd been grateful when he'd texted yesterday afternoon and said he'd been called into work last-minute, and could they skip Henry's lesson this week? A little bit of time apart had seemed good. Welcome.

She misses him, but seeing him doesn't help. Trying, however awkwardly, to be friends doesn't help. It just makes her miss him  _more_ , and then she's back to sulky-angry-depressed. And it's not as if the last time they saw each other had ended so well.

So she doesn't mind that she has to pick up Henry, she doesn't even mind that it has to be at the Rabbit Hole. She just wishes she could do that and still manage to avoid Robin. Just this week, just for a full week, she had hoped she might have a bit of breathing room.

No such luck.

When she walks in, he glances up and their eyes lock immediately. She feels it like a bolt of lightning to her belly, a flush of adrenaline that doesn't fizzle out even when he looks back to the pint he's pulling.

The bar is busy, but not packed, and it doesn't take her long to find Henry sitting at the nearest end of the bar, a plate in front of him. Of course. God forbid he be sitting at a table, somewhere not so… right there. (She gets it, she understands – Robin is still watching him, wants him close by where he can keep an eye on him, but it doesn't exactly work out in her favor.)

The Orioles are, in fact, playing, and Henry is absorbed in the first inning, dipping fries in barbeque sauce and bringing them to his mouth one-by-one with a zombie-like slowness. He's entirely oblivious to her presence until she leans over his shoulder and asks, "Is this seat taken?"

He startles a little, then grins at her and shakes his head. Regina slides onto the empty stool beside him with a smile. If it's a little false, well, it's because her belly still feels hot and shaky.

But her son's "Hi, Mom!" goes a long way toward settling her, sliding that smile into something truly genuine.

"Hi, sweetheart," she greets, setting her purse on the bartop in front of her and asking, "How was your day?"

"Good," he mumbles around a mouthful of fries, and she bites back the urge to tell him not to chew with his mouth full. She settles for a lift of her brows, and it's enough – he chews rapidly and then swallows hard, reaching for his nearly empty Coke and sucking on the straw for a second before setting it back down, and telling her, "We built stuff."

"Built stuff, did you?" A food menu appears in front of her, sliding over her purse and catching in the strap. She glances away from Henry long enough to get a quick smile from Robin, strained at the edges, before he walks away again without a word, turns to do something at the register. Regina wonders if she's being ignored, left alone, or if he's just doing his job. "What did you build?"

"Bookshelves," Henry answers simply, his attention back on the TV. The batter hits a double, and the room erupts in pockets of celebration, one of which comes from her own son. "Did you see that?" he asks excitedly, and she nods.

"I did." Her hand reaches for the menu automatically, even though she hadn't intended on staying. They don't eat here often – had once or twice during the spring and early summer, but it's Robin's domain and she doesn't really like to invade. Plus, the menu is largely… fried. Burgers, and chicken strips, and buffalo wings. Bar fare. Not really her speed.

A closer look, though, reveals that things seem to have changed, if only slightly, since the last time she was here. There are salads now. Salads with things like buffalo chicken and blue cheese on them, but she can get the dressing on the side, and eat around the chicken. Or eat it sparingly (she does have a weak spot for food with a little kick).

She presses her teeth into her bottom lip, debating between that or just a side of fries and something else when she gets home. The fries would be faster, would have her gone sooner. Then again, she could just skip food entirely, take Henry home now (he has what looks like three bites of burger left, and a handful of fries).

"Can I get you a drink?"

She hadn't noticed Robin's return, too intent on the menu, but she looks up at the sound of his voice and he's right there. Right in front of her. Leaning against the bar in a t-shirt that fits his shoulders oh-so-well and makes the blue in his eyes pop. He could use a shave, his stubble a little unkempt, and he's looking at her like… like… Like he's drinking her in. His gaze is restless, flitting across her face, hopping from one focal point to another but never leaving her, dropping down only briefly to her scoop-necked blouse and then snapping back up.

She feels studied. Exposed. But at the same time, she understands the impulse. To look, and look, and take in every detail.

Anger flares in her chest at the thought that she cannot just reach out and touch him the way she wants to, and she grits her teeth, drops her gaze back to the menu.

"On me," he tells her, and it's only then that she remembers he's just asked her something. A drink order.

Right.

Is she staying or going?

Henry's still working on the last of his dinner, and it's not like she has to finish every last drop if she orders something. She can stay for a drink. Half a drink.

"Cider." She looks back up in time to see him relax infinitesimally, and then he asks if she wants draft or bottle. She goes with draft, and Robin turns to fetch it while she reaches over to steal one of Henry's fries, much to his chagrin. Regina arches a brow at him. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm the one who's going to be paying for those fries."

"Nope," Henry denies, looking smug and satisfied. "I worked for it. It's on the house."

"You worked for it, huh?" She shifts her purse from the bartop to the hook underneath, making room in front of her for her drink (but not her meal, she doesn't think she'll stay for food). "And what sort of child labor did they have you doing here today?"

He purses his lips, compiling his list, she thinks, and then he starts to tick his tasks off one by one: "I wiped down the tables, and I put out all the salt and pepper shakers, and I helped refill the ketchups, and I helped set out the glasses in the bar, and then Robin taught me how to make drinks."

Regina's brows shoot up at that last one, and she swivels her head to nail Robin with a look as he sets a pint of cider in front of her, a little jerk of hesitation in the action as he hears what Henry's just told her.

"He taught you to make drinks, did he?" Her words are directed at Henry, but her gaze never wavers from Robin.

"I taught him how to pour Coke from the gun," Robin assures her. "So he could get his own refills if it got busy."

"I see." Well, that makes sense. But in light of the new information, "And just how many refills has he managed to get himself?"

Man and boy alike slide into expressions of guilt, although Henry's comes with a sugar-sweet smile he uses when he's trying to convince her he deserves one more video game, or one more night of pizza for dinner, or one more hour of TV before bed. Years of motherhood have steeled her to it, honing her own look of doubtful authority. His shoulders rise, and drop, and whether that means he doesn't remember or doesn't want to confess, Regina comes to the same conclusion, reaching over and sliding his glass to the far side of her own.

"Why don't we get him a glass of water?" she tells Robin – more of an order than a request.

He bites the bottom lip of a smile, and reaches for the half-empty Coke, whisking it away as Regina reaches for her cider, and sips, enjoying the cool, sweet taste on her tongue. Yes, one drink she can do. She's made it this long, after all.

"Finish up," she urges Henry lightly, and his expression falls into a deep frown, a little crease of confusion between his brows.

"You're not gonna eat?"

She sips her cider again, shakes her head, and reminds, "We have food at home."

He fidgets a little in his seat, toys anxiously with a fry. "But I'm watching the game."

Regina is unmoved.

"We have a TV at home."

"But you're not done with your drink," he bargains, starting to look downright petulant about the prospect of leaving. Regina lifts her drink, takes a deep swallow, sets it down just as Robin slides a fresh glass of ice water in front of Henry.

"I'm driving," she tells her son. "I don't need to finish it."

"But–" His scowl deepens, and he seeks out Robin, probably looking for reinforcements. But he doesn't ask him for backup. Instead, Henry clears his throat loudly, a conspicuous demand. Robin gives him a little shake of the head, and Regina is momentarily thankful that Robin seems to have her back. And then Henry does it again, louder, shooting a look somewhere behind Robin and then lifting his brows at him expectantly.

What on earth?

Robin sighs and turns, reaching for a bouquet of flowers sitting against the back end of the bar, and holding them out for her. "These are for you," he tells her, utterly without enthusiasm. He sounds… embarrassed. Guilty, maybe.

Regina's stomach feels like a rock, and she lifts her cider for another slow sip in an attempt to soften it. Is he trying to win her back? Is this some sick attempt to reconcile – using Henry as bait to get her close enough for him to ply her with flowers and puppy dog looks?

She looks from the flowers clutched in his fist to the look of contrition on his face, and then for a few moments, they just stare at each other, Regina confused but guarded, Robin looking like he wants to squirm.

No, this isn't a reconciliation attempt. If it was, he'd be trying to charm her. Maybe it's just… kindness?

Regina reaches out for the flowers, cellophane and paper crinkling under her grip.

"There's a card," Henry pipes up from her left. Sure enough, there is. Nestled in amongst a fragrant flush of pink roses, there's a little square of paper. "But Robin said I wasn't allowed to read it. That it was just for you."

"I see," Regina murmurs. Does he expect her to read it now? What does it say? Does she even want to get into this with Henry right here? She should've skipped the drink and gone straight home.

"I'm due for a break," Robin tells her, his voice soft. "If you do want something to eat, I'll put it in before I go, or you can just… tell August. But I'll... be away from the bar for a bit."

It's a small consolation that Robin sounds as miserably awkward about all of this as she feels. And he's giving her an out, she realizes. A break. Leaving so she can stay and be comfortable. But this is his place, not hers, and she can't keep him from his work.

"No, that's alright," she assures. "You have work to do, we should–"

"Regina–" He interrupts, reaching out a few inches and then fisting his hand, dropping it back to the bartop. Regina's stomach twists at the aborted attempt for contact. But then he's leveling her with those too-blue eyes, and telling her, "It's no bother to me to have you here, as long as you don't mind me spending most of my time serving other people. If you want dinner, you should have it." His hand, still clenched, bounces lightly against the bar before he adds, "Read the card."

And then he's walking away, nodding to August as he comes in from the back, then pointing between himself and the front. August nods back, and Robin heads toward the other end of the bar, walking around it just as August steps behind him and makes straight for a customer with an empty glass. A smooth and practiced transition between shift time and break time.

Regina looks away, pretends she cannot feel Robin's presence as he walks toward the front door and the warm mugginess of the July evening air.

" _So_." Henry draws the word out, filling the single syllable with several words worth of questioning before he actually continues and asks, "What does the card say?"

Regina looks at him. And looks at him. She shouldn't do this, shouldn't get into this here, but Robin knows how she feels about involving Henry and he'd told her to read it, hadn't he? Surely he wouldn't put anything in there that would upset her and then ask her to read it in public. So she plucks the little envelope from its resting place with a sigh, sets the flowers on the bar and carefully draws the card out. Handwritten, again, but she'd expected that.

 _Regina - I'm sorry for these. Henry insisted I buy them and give them to you. I think he's hoping enough romantic gestures will make everything better. Maybe too many romcoms with Mom?_ He's wedged a little smiley face on the edge of the paper after that, and Regina's lips quirk up slightly at the doodle.  _If I thought flowers could fix this, I'd send the whole shop. Robin_

She smiles in spite of the thick knot in her throat, brushing her thumb over that last sentence and wondering for a brief, fleeting second if maybe they could make this work anyway. If she could learn to trust him again, and– No. Don't think like that, that's silly. They have no future. She won't risk her parents figuring out what she already knows. She  _can't_  do this.

Swallowing heavily, she tucks the card back into its envelope and then reaches forward to shove it blindly into her purse.

Henry is waiting expectantly when she straightens. "Well?"

"It said 'this card is none of Henry's business,'" she tells him primly, and he groans, tipping back so far she worries for a second he'll overbalance, her hand shooting out to brace against his back.

"You guys are the worst," Henry grouses, leaning forward again and planting his elbows on the bar, chin dropping into his hands.

His flair for the dramatics makes her smile again (and so does the veiled admission that he'd tried to get more information out of Robin – and failed), amusement drawing a low chuckle up and out. "I'm sorry, Henry." She shifts her hand, rubs soothingly between his shoulder blades. "I'm afraid this may be something you're just too young to understand."

He lets out a disgruntled  _hmph!_  just as August makes his way down the bar toward them, his gait uneven. Regina's never asked about the limp – morbid curiosity has always had her wanting to, she'd meant to ask Robin, before, but never got around to her. None of her business anyway, she figures, putting the thought out of her mind.

August is all smiles, friendly and welcoming, forgoing a proper greeting in favor of a teasing, "I see you've come to steal away my newest employee?"

"Well, we wouldn't want you penalized for violating child labor laws, now would we?" Regina throws back gamely, giving him a smile herself. He chuckles and she opts for an apology. "Thank you for letting him stay here. Robin could've just called the regular sitter; you didn't have to… have him underfoot all night."

"Oh, it was my pleasure," August dismisses. "He's good with a rag."

"Hm," Regina huffs, giving her son a suspicious look. "I could use some of those voluntary cleaning skills on our own countertops."

Henry glowers – or tries to, but there's a little pull at the corner of his mouth that doesn't quite hide the smile he's fighting. And then he grins, and straightens, and tells her, "You don't give me tips," holding an open palm out to August.

"Oh, no you don't," Regina argues before any money can change hands. "The sitters don't pay us; we pay them."

"Sorry, kid," August shrugs, reaching over and bringing his hand down onto Henry's, a low-five all he gets for his trouble. "Mom's spoken."

"Aw, man," he sighs, drawing his hand back and reaching for his water. "It was worth a try, I guess."

Regina rolls her eyes and grabs her own drink, her words half muffled into her glass – "I don't know when you got so sneaky" – before she takes another swallow.

August is still smiling, watching the two of them, clearly amused by her son's antics (she is too, to be honest). The mood has shifted, now that Robin's out of the room, if not out of mind. It's gone lighter, she feels less… fraught. So when August asks if he can get her anything for dinner, she almost says yes.

Almost.

But Robin's break won't last forever, and if she orders that buffalo chicken salad, she'll eat all the chicken, she knows she will. And then it'll be a night of heartburn and caloric regret, of sweating on the treadmill when she'd rather take a long shower and curl up with a book, or watch a movie on the couch with Henry.

No, she shouldn't stay. It won't help anything, lingering here with her hurt feelings and her bruised heart.

Decision made, then.

"No, I think we're going to head out, just as soon as  _someone_  finishes his fries." She glances sidelong at Henry, and adds, "Unless you're done." He pops up like a Jack-in-the-Box and shakes his head, reaching for another certainly-now-cold fry. Her lips curve knowingly, her own head shaking at his over-enthusiasm for a few fried bits of potato. "I've been told all of this is on the house," she tells August, gesturing between her glass and Henry's plate, "But I think that's just Robin sucking up. So tell me what I owe you."

"Nothing," August insists.

"No. You pay for this, so I will, too. How much?"

"Nothing," he tells her again, holding up a hand when she opens her mouth to protest, "And if you leave any money on this bar when you leave, I know someone who lives two doors down who'll gladly return it to you. This one's on me."

Regina presses her lips together and tightens her grip on her glass. She wants to argue the point even further, but she doesn't doubt that August will do just as he said and send the money home with Robin for her. More trouble than it's worth just to make a point. So, "Fine. Thank you."

"Just this once," he smirks. "And don't stay away so long next time." He leans in, his voice low and conspiratorial as he adds, "You're a good tipper."

Regina laughs, tries very hard not to make it strained. She'd been a great tipper. Of course she had – Robin had been serving them. She doesn't know how much August knows, or doesn't know, so she doesn't tell him that return trips aren't terribly likely for them – not unless they come in on the weekends, when Robin is off.

A quick glance at Henry finds his burger gone entirely now, his cheeks puffed out as he chews and chews and chews. Her mother would be horrified. "Henry, one bite at a time," she chides gently. He just shrugs and chews some more.

August has shifted his attention to the bar at large, still standing in front of them, but sweeping his gaze across the room. Looking for needy patrons, no doubt. He must come up empty, because he asks her, "Are you coming Thursday?"

Regina frowns. "What's on Thursday?" Henry mumbles something excitedly around his mouthful, and that frown pitches into a scowl. "Henry Daniel, do not talk with your mouth full. Where are your manners today?"

He looks properly chastened, reaching for his water as August helpfully translates from stuff-mouthed to Common English: "Robin's playing. He didn't tell you?"

So he doesn't know then.

Regina swallows down another sip of cider, licks her lips.

"No, he didn't mention it."

It makes sense, though – that must be why he'd worked Monday. Why he'd cancelled the lesson. A tiny petty part of her is hurt that he didn't tell her, and that just stokes the ever-smoldering embers of her anger. She has no right to be hurt. They're just trying to mend their friendship, just trying to get past awkward silences and careful avoidance. He certainly doesn't need to invite her to something like a live music night at his place of business. But she knows how much this must mean to him, a chance to play again, to get himself back out there. And it would have been so easy to slip into the conversation -  _Can I cancel Henry's lesson this week? I have a gig on Thursday and have to work tonight._

"You should come by," August urges, unintentionally fanning the flames of her ire by adding, "I'm sure he'd love the support."

 _Wouldn't he just_ , she thinks bitterly, swallowing another mouthful of cider. Her glass is almost empty. They should go.

"Yeah, Mom," Henry urges, his mouth now free and clear. "He's playing at seven-thirty and ten. You could get here by then from work, and we could have dinner and watch him play."

Regina smiles tightly, tells him, "I think one night at a bar is enough for a week, young man." He slumps, disappointed, and she reminds herself that Robin is not just her almost-lover, he's also Henry's teacher, someone he admires for the very thing he'll be doing on Thursday night. So she relents ever so slightly, adding, "But I'll think about it. Now, let's go."

"That's what I like to hear," August encourages, absently straightening a napkin holder, a pile of coasters behind the bar. He's hovering, she realizes. Making sure Regina actually doesn't try to leave money behind for their food.

She can't decide if she thinks it's annoying or charming, so at the last minute, as Henry is sliding off his stool, she reaches into her purse, unzips her wallet and fishes blindly by memory, then slaps a twenty down onto the counter and heads for the door.

Ignoring his "Hey!" behind her, she presses her palm to Henry's back, urges  _Keep walking_  through a triumphant snicker, and pretends she doesn't see Robin sitting against the hood of his car as she walks to her own in the parking lot.


	21. Chapter 21

"He's having an affair."

It takes all of Regina's energy not to roll her eyes or exhale her annoyance (Mal isn't so polite, letting out a  _Sweet Jesus_  and vacating her place at the break room table), but she can tell by the misery in Kathryn's voice that she means it this time. Something has happened, she knows something she hadn't before.

And as much as Regina would love to focus on her own terrible love life and not someone else's, Kathryn is her friend. So. She'll play ball.

She furrows her brow in confused sympathy, her spoon taking one final spin through her recently doctored coffee before she taps it against the edge of her mug and sets it aside.

"How do you know?"

"I found this." Kathryn passes over her phone with a hand that trembles just slightly, and Regina feels a pang of genuine sympathy at the other woman's distress. At first glance, it looks like she's in Kathryn's messages, but then she realizes she's looking at a screencap. No, these are David's messages. His messages with a woman. Messages that include the words "Kathryn's working late tomorrow," and "You know I don't want to ruin your marriage–" (Regina's brows lift, because honestly, then, what are you doing with him?) "–but this can't go on," and "I love you."

Regina's jaw clenches with annoyance. David Nolan is cheating on his wife. Right here, plain as day. And he's stupid enough to get caught.

"He forgot to delete her messages before he got in the shower last night," Kathryn says, her voice thickening with the unshed tears welling in her eyes. "He's actually having an affair with some… some…  _woman_."

"That might be too polite of a word for her," Regina mutters, her gaze flicking to the top of the screen to find out the name of said  _woman_. She blinks, blinks again. There's no name, just a phone number (so he's not entirely stupid, then). But the number is familiar. Kathryn wouldn't know it, would never have cause to, but Regina does.

Regina knows it by heart. Because what mother doesn't know the number of her babysitter?

"What do I do?" Kathryn asks her.

Regina continues to stare dumbly at the screen. Mary Margaret. David Nolan is having an affair with Mary Margaret Blanchard. The grade school teacher, with her sweater vests, and her obsession with bluebirds and 80s pop, and her loopy handwriting and overenthusiastic smiley faces on the notes she leaves for Regina when she sits for Henry.  _Mary Margaret Blanchard_ is a homewrecker. When had she and David even met? (That's a silly question; Kathryn has brought David to work functions, and Mary Margaret has attended at least a few of them with her father.)

"Regina," Kathryn says her name, grabs her wrist and squeezes, and Regina realizes she's been so floored by this particular revelation that she's been struck mute for a solid minute. "What do I  _do_?"

Regina looks up to Kathryn's face, imploring, pleading, devastated. Should she tell her?

"Do you–" Regina clears her throat slightly. "Do you know who she is?"

"No." Kathryn shakes her head, taking the phone Regina hands back over to her. "No, it was just the number."

It isn't her business to tell, she decides. And quite frankly, as much as she likes Kathryn, she's not sure she wants to be around when this particular powder keg blows. Let David make his excuses, and if he lies, well… Maybe then Regina will speak up. After all, the news that her husband is banging the boss's daughter is probably not best delivered in the middle of the office break room.

"You should confront him," she tells Kathryn, lifting her coffee and taking a brief sip.

Kathryn looks at her phone with a mixture of dread and heartbreak, like the device itself is responsible for her current predicament. "You think?"

Regina laces her voice with plenty of compassion when she asks, "What other choice do you have? You deserve better than a man who's unfaithful. A man who lies, who deceives you. If he can't be honest with you, if he can't tell you the truth of who he is, of what he's done, then..." Regina swallows, her mind whispering  _Robin_ … "Then you have to have enough self-respect to call him on his shit. Because you deserve more than that; you deserve the truth."

The blonde runs her fingertip along the edge of her phone, then strokes it once across the screen, now gone dark, hiding its secrets behind gorilla glass and a password. The breath Kathryn lets out sounds an awful lot like defeat. "You're right. I know you're right…" Her teeth dig into her bottom lip, and she looks to Regina, looks lost, looks miserable.

 _Maybe love really isn't worth it_ , Regina thinks, just before Kathryn says her name again and then swoops in for an unexpected hug. Regina reciprocates, if a bit awkwardly–the break room isn't a terribly appropriate place to hug it out.  _Maybe,_  she thinks,  _It's easier to just be alone._

But the words sound hollow, even to herself. She's been alone, and while familiar, it isn't easier. Less complicated maybe, less messy, but the long, lonely nights certainly come with their own disadvantages.

She startles slightly when the door swings open, and she and Kathryn step apart swiftly as Sidney strolls into the room. He catches the movement and stops, caught, almost guilty; Regina's gaze flicks down to the large bag of mini Reese's cups clutched in his hands.

Realization dawns, pulling her gaze to the bowl on the kitchen table that has just run empty of the sweet treats.

Kathryn runs her hands through her hair, smoothes the already impeccable strands and brushes out an invisible wrinkle in her blouse as Regina and Sidney engage in silent conversation.

 _It's you?_  she asks with a pointed glance and lift of her brows.

 _It's me_ , he answers with a shrug and guilty smile. No words are necessary to make the leap that it's no coincidence the candy du jour is her favorite.

Her smile is kind and sincere, even if she does shake her head at him.

"We should get back to work," Regina declares, and Sidney and Kathryn both snap into action, the former ripping open one end of the bag and heading for the table, the latter making a beeline for the coffee with a distracted nod.

Regina reaches over and steals a peanut butter cup as they tumble from bag to bowl, muttering to Sidney, "I don't know whether to kiss you or kick you for these."

Surprise flickers over his face for a moment, and she realizes just what she'd said. Shit. But then it goes, and he smirks, taunting back, "I'm not sure either would be acceptable workplace behavior."

Regina chuckles and closes her fist around the sweet, her other clutching her coffee mug. She leaves the break room thinking that David Nolan may be a dirty cheat, and Robin may have been a liar, but at least there are some consistent men in the world. Sidney Glass is faithful as a puppy.

**.::.**

It doesn't help.

The studio. The extra space. He finishes it all on Wednesday afternoon, but it doesn't help. He's as blocked as ever.

Comfy new chair, a desk with neatly arranged composition books and perfectly sharpened pencils, and not a word of his own making to show for it.

Well, a word. Here and there. A line or two, and a melody. But nothing resembling a song, nothing so much as that.

He drags his hand through his hair and sighs heavily, for a moment entertaining the thought that he may actually be a dried up old fool. Maybe his best days really are behind him, and all that's left of that creative mind, the one that could churn out song after song, is a hollow casing. His brain rattling around inside like a nut that doesn't fit its shell. Thank God for Roland, or life might be pointless. An endless sea of pints and regrets.

Maybe he could write about that.

Pints and pity. Pointlessness.

Lovely alliteration, that, if nothing else.

He could pen a whole album – A Purposeless Parade of Pints and Pity: The Robin Locksley Story.

Of course, that sounds more like a memoir than anything anyone would want to listen to. God, he really is shit. Life is shit. Everything is shit.

He will never write another bloody song again.

He might as well accept it now, what with only another day to solidify some sort of set list. He'll reach into the vault of his old songs for a few original pieces, sing songs about Marian, about life before everything went pear-shaped, and he'll throw in a few covers.

And then he'll never let August talk him into anything like this again.

**.::.**

Regina works late on Thursday, if you can call reorganizing her file drawer, cleaning her keyboard, disinfecting her phone and doing a bit of early online shopping for Henry's birthday "working." She's sure as hell going to call it that; it sounds much better than "stalling until she knows she'll arrive home after eight and thus have every excuse not to have dinner at The Rabbit Hole."

Henry wants to see Robin play, she knows he does, and she even tells Granny Lucas that she should feel free to take him to the bar for dinner if she so desires, but Regina's not sure she can handle going herself. Does she want to? Oh, yes. Is she curious? Certainly. Does she enjoy the sound of his voice? So very much.

But she hears it every week, a private concert in her own living room; she doesn't need the painfully attractive visual of Robin under cheap stage lights, singing something other than easy-learning classic rock, his focus entirely on his music and not on coaching her son. She's having a hard enough time trying to keep from thinking of him as it is.

So she "works" late, and she arrives home to an empty house. Granny's car had been parked outside the Rabbit Hole–she'd swung by just to check, figuring if she saw the old station wagon, she wouldn't have to go across the street and get Henry. The packed parking lot had made her smile; he'll have a good crowd, then. Not that it should matter to her. It doesn't; he doesn't. (It does, and he does.)

The house is quiet, blessedly so, and Regina takes full advantage, stripping out of her work clothes and indulging in a long, hot shower, buffing her skin with a delectably scented salt scrub and deep conditioning her hair. She lets hot water run for a while on the tight knots in her neck and shoulders, makes a mental note to book a massage one of these days. Then towels off and slathers her skin in lotion, lavender-scented and extra hydrating, emerging from the bathroom a new woman. And then she puts on yoga pants and Daniel's sweatshirt, because it's not as if she has anywhere to go tonight, is it?

Henry's home by the time she heads downstairs; she can hear him in the living room, playing his guitar, his night's entertainment apparently inspiring him to practice immediately. He's on the couch, the lesson notes Robin always leaves with him spread out on the coffee table as he bends over the guitar and plays with a look of fierce determination.

She smiles at the sight, and leans over, dropping a kiss onto his head as she asks, "How was the show?"

"It was good," he mutters absently, and then he looks up, frowning. "Hey, how did you know I went?"

"I asked Granny to take you, since I knew I'd be working late," she tells him, heading for the kitchen and pulling open the fridge, wondering what to make for her own dinner.

Henry is hot on her heels, guitar momentarily forgotten.

"So you wouldn't have to go?"

Regina presses her lips together, glad her back is to him. "No, because a ten PM set is too late for you, and I was still at work at seven. You ate, I'm assuming?"

She reaches in for the carton of yogurt, and the blueberries, setting them out on the countertop while Henry plops into one of the kitchen chairs.

"Yeah, I had a burger. And I think you're lying. It's summer, I could have stayed up late."

"Not that late, mister. And watch the sass." She steps around him to pull a bag of granola from the pantry, then brings it back to the counter with the rest of her dinner, and pulls a bowl down from the pantry. Yogurt is scooped, berries rinsed and generously sprinkled atop it, and then exactly one quarter cup of granola is added to the bowl. She returns the remains of her ingredients to their respective homes, and all the while Henry tries to convince her that she'd done exactly as she had: avoided the bar, and the man in it.

"I could have just this once," and "I bet it would have meant a lot to Robin," and "Maybe we could go to the late set, so I can hear it all again, and you can too. He sang some really good songs."

"You will be in bed by ten," she reminds, before scooping up a bite from her bowl and munching away, resting her back against the counter's edge.

"Okay, but  _you_  could go."

"Henry–"

"I… sort of told him that maybe you would come after work," Henry confesses, and great. That's just great. Regina exhales heavily, setting her yogurt aside. She's not terribly hungry all of a sudden.

"Oh, sweetheart," she sighs. "I wish you hadn't done that. I can't go tonight, there's no one to watch you if I go out."

"I can stay by myself," he reasons. "It's only a couple of hours. I stay by myself that long every morning."

He has a point, she supposes, but still.

"This is different."

"Why?"

"Because… it's nighttime."

Henry crosses his arms and gives her a look that is startling in its familiarity–he definitely learned that one from her. "That's a dumb reason."

"It's a perfectly good reason." She reaches for her bowl again, if for no other excuse than to have something to do with her hands, some way to casually dismiss this conversation. "What kind of mother would I be if I left you all alone, in a dark house, on a dark street…"

"Are you trying to scare me? Because that's probably not a good mom thing either."

Regina snaps her mouth shut.

True. Scare tactics aren't exactly banner parenting maneuvers. Okay. So. Fine. She'll play the Mom Card: "Here's a reason: Because I said so. Now, drop it."

Henry heaves a sigh, a massive whole-body one, and props his head dramatically on the back of his chair.

"You guys are impossible," he groans. "Why can't you just forgive him?"

She feels the question like a knife in her gut, dropping her gaze to her bowl so Henry can't see her expression. Oh, to be ten years old and oblivious to the complexities of adult life. Sometimes she envies her son, she really does.

"Henry. I have asked you, time and again, not to carry on about me and Robin–"

"But he loves you."

She freezes, her heart pounding suddenly hard. Loud. She can  _feel_  it in her ears, can hear it.

Regina swallows heavily and asks with remarkable calm, "Did he tell you that?"

"Not in those  _exact_  words," Henry says, and Regina feels her ribs loosen, her pulse slow ever so slightly.

She lifts one brow and asks, "So you've just inferred this, then?" But she knows how he can be, how fervently he believes things, how persistent he is in getting others to do the same, so she doesn't give him time to answer her. "I don't think we should go putting words–especially  _those_  words–in Robin's mouth."

"I know it," Henry tells her firmly, but he's known lots of things in his young life that did not turn out to be true. He's a romantic, far more than he ought to be at ten, and he's a fierce believer that good people get good things in the end (something she supposes she's rather proud of, considering it took her a long, long time to think that she was good, much less that being so made her in any way deserving of goodness in return), and that true love wins all.

And maybe he's right. Maybe Robin  _does_ … feel that way. But if he does, is that any better? Isn't it worse? Isn't all of this just… worse?

She wishes sometimes, for brief moments, that Robin had never forced his way into her living room, into her life. Moments like this, when she is weary, and aching, and impotent to do anything about the situation they've found themselves in. The moments fade, the wishes fade. She's glad to know him, glad to have his friendship; she wouldn't trade the moments of genuine connection and understanding for the peace of ignorance to the truth of things.

But sometimes, for a moment, she wishes.

"Henry…" Her voice is quiet, hollow. She doesn't know what she's going to say, doesn't know what  _to_  say, but she knows she doesn't want to talk about this anymore. So in the end, she tells him, "You should take a shower before bed. Now."

"But–"

"Now, Henry."

She's not harsh with her words, but she is firm, and Henry seems to recognize that her will is more than a match for his stubbornness.

He draws out a petulant  _Fiiiine_ , and drags himself from his chair, trudging toward the hall.

Regina stirs her spoon through her soggy granola and broods.

**.::.**

He didn't expect to see her.

Not even when Henry told him she might come. He knew, even then, that Regina would not be likely to set foot into The Rabbit Hole tonight, and he'd made his peace with that. It was probably better, to be honest, considering he'd ended up with a set that rings a bit like a therapy session. A fair few too many songs that are rather on the nose for how he feels, what he's going through. It's cathartic–the first set had been, anyway–being able to purge all his feelings out into a room full of people ready and waiting to gobble them up. Almost like a transfusion.

He'd known a girl once, a friend of Marian's–so not a girl, then, a woman–who'd been ill. Something chronic, something she'd had to live with. She'd had to go in every now and then to get her blood "scrubbed," as she'd liked to call it. They'd hook her up to tubes, draw it out, do whatever it was they did and pump it right back in, clean as a whistle. Sometimes he thinks music is a bit like that–he hooks himself into the audience, pours out all his messy pieces, and takes them back at the end of the night, somehow less chaotic. Somehow less toxic.

Maybe it's lending voice to them, maybe it's the melody, maybe it's simply knowing that you're not alone in what you're feeling for just a little while. That moment of connection, the moment you light on a face and hear it answering back  _Yes, me too_  in silent solidarity.

It  _is_ cathartic. And so while he'd begun his first set with a good amount of nerves (if she was going to come at all, it would have been then, with Henry, and it's been ages since he's done anything like this, put himself out there in this way for an entire evening), he readies himself for his second set with a certain accepting calm. There's the usual undercurrent of anticipatory anxiety, the what-ifs of a new crowd of ears to please, the possibility of a mistake here or there. But his biggest concerns have been quelled, and the two whiskies he's had haven't hurt either.

He blames that calm, and his dead certainty that she wouldn't show now if she hadn't earlier, for the fact that he doesn't notice her until he's three songs in.

And then there she is, sitting at the far end of the bar, nursing something clear, stirring it with her straw and staring at the motion intently. The sight of her almost stops him mid-verse, almost trips him up enough to make him forget the words that are supposed to come next. Almost, but not quite. Thank God for muscle memory, and the fact that he spotted her during one of his band's old songs. Something he could perform in his sleep.

He feels like a voyeur, like she's someone he shouldn't be looking at, at least not without her knowing he's doing so. But then, she's here, and she's not skulking away in some corner, so she must know he'll see her eventually. And so he watches, lets his hands and his lips move by rote and drinks in the sight of her, in a plain black t-shirt, her hair in loose waves instead of blown out as usual. Come to think of it, maybe that's why he hadn't noticed her at first. This isn't public Regina, it's Monday-night-post-run Regina, or Saturday morning digging in the dirt Regina.

God, he's missed her.

It's the last thought he has before he's strumming the final chord of his song, and then he has to reel his attention back in, glancing quickly at the set list taped to the floor as he does.

And that's when he realizes, with a shot of adrenaline that fizzles from his gut out through to his fingers and toes, that he's not the only one who's at risk of bleeding out tonight.

**.::.**

She doesn't know what she's doing here.

She wasn't planning on coming tonight, had meant that, one-hundred percent, absolutely. She had been dressed for bed–from the moment she left the shower, she had been dressed for home, had been intent on staying in. She'd tucked Henry in (as much as a ten year old will let his mother do such things), and settled into the arm chair in the living room with her book.

And then before she knew it, she'd been headed for her bedroom, swapping yoga pants for jeans and Daniel's shirt for a soft cotton top. Nothing fancy, because it's just The Rabbit Hole, and she's not going to impress anyone. Not him, not anyone. So she'd skipped makeup for the most part, too–just a coat of mascara and some tinted lip balm, her hair still in the messy curls it dried in.

She's not staying long. Henry is at home, in bed, asleep (she'd checked on him before she left, and he'd been out cold–she'd left a note in their usual place on the fridge, just in case he woke up before she returned). She's told herself an hour, tops. Door to door. Henry will be okay for an hour.

Robin had already started when she'd come in, and she'd thought about tucking herself in a corner table, but she's too proud to hide like some pathetic… person. And so she'd opted for the bar instead. Because, let's be honest, she's going to need a drink to get through this.

She knows the girl behind the bar–Ruby–in passing. She's Granny Lucas's granddaughter, had lived with the older woman when Henry and Regina first moved in. And she's seen her here several times as well. So she smiles pleasantly, and orders a vodka soda, resists the urge to tell Ruby to keep 'em coming.

It doesn't take her long to fix the drink, but it's long enough that Regina has a minute with nothing to do. She has her phone, in case Henry needs her, but it seems somehow rude to pull it out–or maybe she simply doesn't want to risk the light drawing his attention just yet. She might stay for just one drink and go, and in that case maybe it's better if he doesn't know she's here at all. Is that worse than coming and going so quickly, she wonders?

She finds herself looking at him, watching him while he's unaware. While he's in his element. And he is, he really is. She's always enjoyed watching him play–tries not to do it too often, because lessons are Henry's time, not hers, but she sneaks a peek now and then. Watches his fingers slide along the frets, the steady rhythm of his strumming. Of course, he's usually playing something of Henry's skill set–something relatively simple. Now, he's  _playing_. Really, truly, and his voice isn't a guide for novice strumming, but something meant to serve a melody, an emotion. It has more color, more intensity.

She should not have come here.

He's wearing a shirt that brings out the blue in his eyes, and somehow sets off the color of his guitar at the same time–the guitar that  _she_  bought him, and oh how long ago that seems. When he was struggling and miserable, and such a painfully attractive wreck she could not look away from.

Now the wreck is both of them. Thank God nobody knows well enough to rubberneck.

Ruby brings her drink (quickly, finally) and Regina decides that maybe it's best if she doesn't watch him. Maybe it's best if she just sits here and sips this vodka soda until it's nothing but ice, and just… listens. Keeps her eyes off those hands, and those lips, and those eyes, those frets and strings.

So for a while, that's what she does: Nurses her drink and listens. She should drink faster, perhaps, but she really does like the sound of his voice. And her hour isn't up yet, not nearly. So she sips, and when she's not sipping she focuses on the rise and fizz of the bubbles in her glass, stirring her straw in figure eights through the constellation of ice cubes.

He's singing something about beaches, something she doesn't know. She wonders if it's his, from before. They'd lived on the coast once, he and Marian. She knows that much.

And then that songs ends, and he's speaking, a soft clearing of throat, and a pause, and then he says, "I didn't write this next song," his voice a little hesitant, a little stilted. "And I've never cheated. But I, ah…" He trails off for a moment, and she hears his exhale before he finishes, "It felt like it needed to be sung."

Regina's hand settles onto the bar top as he starts to play the intro, loosely cupping her drink as she traces a pattern on the side with her thumb. The glass is cold, damp.

And then Robin starts to sing.

_It's hard to find the perfect time_

_To say something you know is gonna change everything_

_Living with the shame_

_It ain't nothing like the pain that I saw on her face..._

Regina's grip tightens, her thumb pressing hard against the unyielding smoothness, the squared edges distinct against her palm.

She should not have come here.

… _So let it rain, let it pour_

_If she don't love me anymore_

_Just let it come down on me_

_Let it come down on me_

_Every word, let it hurt_

_Even more than I deserve_

_Let it come down on me..._

There's been chatter–people are polite enough, but it's live music in a bar, there's food and drinks being served, the people listening are patrons, not an audience per se. So up until now, there's been the low rumble of conversation, of silverware clinking against plates, the usual murmur of activity in a bar. But now, it's like the whole place has gone silent. Or maybe it seems that way because she knows. She knows why he picked this song. She knows  _she_  is why he picked this song. And it makes her stomach hurt.

She looks up at him, finally, as he sings something about the unfamiliar taste of someone on his lips, just in time to lock eyes, dark on blue, for  _But it's too late to turn around when the shades start coming down, the guilt you feel's the last thing on your mind…_ He looks guilty–looks like he feels guilty–that hold he has on her gaze is tenuous, he flicks away from her a time or two like he can't stand to keep steady on her eyes. So she keeps steady on him instead, her jaw set, her cheeks flushing (thank God it's dark). How dare he air their dirty laundry in public.

But then he slips into the chorus again, and he doesn't look at her, won't, looks at his guitar, or at the back of his eyelids, his focus on the song, the mic. But it's not, he doesn't seem focused, he seems distracted. His posture has a tension it didn't one song ago, and she wonders for a second if he is a fraction as uncomfortable as she is right now.

Having some regrets about his song choices, she thinks with a dark sort of smugness. Good, then. They can be miserable together.

Regina reaches for her drink, bypasses the straw this time and drinks deep.

**.::.**

He hadn't thought she'd come. He'd hoped, but he hadn't thought, and as he sings this song, this song about infidelity and secrets uncovered and broken love, he feels a sweaty-palmed, shaky-stomached nausea. He'd picked his set list with himself in mind, not Regina, not really, not truly, but God, half of them are about her, aren't they? And now she's here, and it may be dim, and there may be lights shining in his eyes, and she may be halfway across the bar but somehow she has managed to situate herself in a spot he can see like a bloody beacon, and she is none too pleased with "Let it Rain."

The words feel like poison on his tongue, and he hopes, God, he  _hopes_  she doesn't think this passive aggressive guilt trip was intentional. He didn't choose this song for sympathy, he just  _feels_  it, had chosen it for himself and not for her.

Fuck.

She lifts her glass and chugs a third of it in one go, then sets it back on the bar, her gaze once again on the bubbles and determinedly not on him. And he's grateful, it's better that way, because her eyes, as always, are like arrows, hitting him right in the soft parts and leaving him to bleed.

God, he should have picked different songs.

He glances down at his set list and tries to do some mental readjustments. He can't remember now, in the middle (the tail end, the last few chords) of another song, if the lyrics to the next one will be as terribly apt, but he thinks there's a chance, and Christ, there are other songs, further down that will not be pleasant either.

Shit, shit, bloody fucking Christ.

His performance-ready repertoire isn't all it ought to be, and as he finishes with "Let it Rain," he grasps for something, anything that he thinks might be benign enough not to send her bolting for the door.

He reaches back for something old, something he and his mates used to sing before  _Regina Mills_  was a name he'd ever heard, fingers slipping automatically into the first chords of an old Billy Pilgrim cover without so much as an intro.

This one is safe, he thinks. This one should do. It's less apt. He hopes…

_I can see you and I don't even know you_

_Falling into the sheets at night_

_Place my hand flat on my chest_

_Feel the heartbeat back the night…_

**.::.**

_I've tried counting sheep and I've talked to the shepherd_

_And I've played with my pillow forever and ever_

_I sit alone and I watch the clock_

_I breathe in on the tick and out on the tock..._

Whether she stays or goes hinges on this song, she's decided. If this is going to be an evening of emotional torment, she's leaving, the fact that he's seen her be damned. But it's… better. This song, it's better. Sleeplessness and loneliness, insomnia, but less like a musical apology letter he'd known just a few nights ago she wasn't yet ready to hear.

He's vamping.

Between chorus and verse, he's played that set of chords already, several times now, long enough that it sounds off, and she glances up to see him looking down, lower lip caught in his teeth, brow furrowed. His cheeks have gone just a little pink. He's lost, she realizes with a bolt of sympathetic anxiety. He doesn't know the words. And he would, she knows he would, he's been preparing for this for days, if not weeks, and it's his second set of the night.

Ruby is standing just in front of her, has paused in the act of unloading a fresh batch of glasses to watch Robin, her lips moving in a silent  _Come on, come on…_

Regina shifts her drink (now empty save for the ice) ever so slightly, and it draws Ruby's attention, their eyes locking for a moment.

"He didn't do this one earlier," Ruby tells her quietly, reaching for her empty glass. That's not what Regina had meant, she wasn't asking for a refill, was just fidgeting (Mother would tell her it doesn't become her to fidget), but before Regina can stop her Robin has found his place again, his voice tremoring just slightly before it evens out as he picks up the verse.

_Dig my head down deep_

_So I can't hear the cars outside on the street_

_And the stars are laughing_

_They get a kick out of my misery_

Regina and Ruby both breathe a sigh of relief, and then the younger woman is gone, off to refill the drink, and, well, Regina supposes two drinks isn't unreasonable. She flicks her phone into life, glances at the time. She has some more to spare...

_I've tried everything short of Aristotle_

_To Dramamine and the whiskey in the bottle_

_I pray for the day when my ship comes in_

_When I can sleep the sleep of the just again…_

_Maybe you should have been more just_ , her brain mutters darkly, and Regina drums her fingertips against the back of her phone, wishing she still had that drink to keep her hands busy. Apparently this song isn't so innocent after all. Ruby's words flit across her mind– _He didn't do this one earlier_ –and Regina wonders why. Why throw in something new at the last minute, something he's clearly not so solid on, something with the risk of public embarrassment?

Maybe this one  _is_  for her, too. Or maybe it's not? Maybe that squirming guilt from the last song was for what he was  _doing_ , not what he'd  _done_. Or maybe he just planned a different set for the late show.

She should go home; she really should go home. She's too tired for the mental gymnastics of trying to determine his motives. If he has motives.

But then Ruby's replaced her drink, and if she's paying for it, she may as well drink it. She shifts on her bar stool, bringing the drink to her lips and looking back at Robin. His attention settles on her a moment later, as he's working his way through the end of the song, and at the moment of eye contact she feels her lips curve in an encouraging smile without thought.

Sure, she's angry about this whole thing, but not so angry, it seems, that she wants to see him stumble at something she knows means so much to him. She hurts, but she doesn't hate.

**.::.**

God, that was bloody awful.

He's not gone up on a song like that in ages (hasn't performed publicly in ages, which is why he'd taken such care to choose songs he knew well enough, to prepare the ones that were rusty or new, and now she's here and it's all gone to shit). He doesn't know if it was the lack of practice or the abundance of Regina, but his mind had gone utterly blank for a good ten seconds before supplying him with the words he'd needed to finish the song.

Mortifying. Fucking mortifying.

His heart is thumping heavily, and he can't bear to make eye contact with any of the sympathetic strangers just in front of him, so he glances at Regina.

And thank bloody Christ, she smiles at him, her head bobbing slightly. It's not pity, it's something else, and it loosens his shoulders, carries his sweaty palms through the last few chords to a smattering of applause and a deep draw of whiskey.

He can't do that again–he's not rehearsed, and he's too out of practice to jump into something new on the fly, too painfully aware of her presence to focus on something he only half-knows. He's sticking to his sodding set list, and if it hurts her, well, he'll just have to find some way to make it up to her.

"What I get for trying to revive an old favorite," Robin chuckles into the mic, figuring it's better to laugh at himself than pretend his little blunder had never happened.

He glances at his set list again, and plays a few errant chords, working out his nerves, before picking up with his next number.

"I wrote this one about an ex-girlfriend, and I can say that because she lives in another country right now."

There's a general chuckle in the audience, and he glances up to see Regina's smile before it softens. Good.

This one, at least, won't cut.

He has just enough time in the intro to wonder why he hadn't simply skipped straight to "Headphones" and been a song short in the end. And then he takes a breath to sing.

**.::.**

It's a song about tuning out a bad relationship in favor of the music pumping into his headphones, and the simplicity of such a thing makes her smile. If only.

But it's not about her, and she's pretty sure it's not for her, so Regina lets herself relax. Sips her drink, and listens, and enjoys. It's easier when she doesn't feel like she's being skewered through the middle by a lyric. It still aches–he means something to her, this man, this beautiful disaster, and she  _misses_  him, wants more than anything to be sitting at this bar smiling, and pleased for him, and proud, and without that ache.

She needs to get over him, she tells herself with another generous sip of vodka. She needs to move on. No matter what he means to her, she needs to move on.

She should probably go home.

But then Ruby is back, leaning on the bar in front of her and watching for a second, smirking at  _I'll be sitting here turning up Zeppelin, and you'll be just another bed that I slept in_ … There's a general rumble of amused oooohing from the other bar patrons, and Regina grins as Robin pauses and then picks up again with a mocking  _I can't hear you, in my headphones…_ He has the room, has won them back from his mistake in the last song. All forgotten, all forgiven. And Regina realizes that she  _is_  proud of him, ache and all.

"It means a lot to him that you're here, you know," Ruby tells her suddenly, her voice just hesitant enough that Regina suspects she has at least a cursory clue of what's been going on between her and Robin. Knows enough to approach with caution, anyway.

Regina presses her lips together, glances up at Robin, back at Ruby. She's not sure what to say to that, so she takes another slow sip from her straw.

"He was bummed when Henry came earlier without you. And then he kept saying that it was probably better that way, but he didn't mean it." She pauses for a moment, and then, "You're important to him. He's made it pretty clear that whatever was going on between you isn't anymore, but… he still cares about you. A lot."

Not helping, not helping. Regina lifts her drink and sips again.

"Anyway, it's none of my business," Ruby shrugs. "I just thought you should know, in case he doesn't get a chance to tell you. It means a lot to him that you're here."

"Thank you," Regina murmurs, although she's not sure why. Does it help to know that? Not really. It keeps her rooted to this barstool, but it doesn't help. It would help if he didn't care. If neither of them cared. It would help if emotion was just a switch she could turn on and off.

Ruby leaves then, heads off to the other end of the bar to refill someone's drink, and Regina turns her attention to Robin. He's finished the song, is fiddling with his guitar, adjusting the capo, giving it a few strums.

"So this next song is another cover," he says, frowning a little and continuing, "I know you probably didn't come here expecting a night half full of covers, but most of my old stuff feels a bit… stale. And I've been having an almost comically bleak plague of writer's block in recent weeks, so my options for keeping things fresh were covers, or me standing here doing a sort of… performance art of frustrated chord-playing and hair pulling."

Ruby returns, then, setting another fresh drink down in front of her.

"You're looking a little low, and I'm going on break," she informs, adding, "This one's on me."

"Oh, I don't–"

But she's talking to air, Ruby is already headed off toward the pass-through at the other end of the bar.

She shouldn't have a third drink, absolutely should not, two is plenty especially with the dinner she had. She can already feel this second drink around the edges of her periphery, can feel it in her elbows, in her knees. A certain buzzed looseness. It's pleasant, but one more drink will have her pleasantly  _drunk_ , and she does have to get home tonight.

She'd walked here–it's not far, and the night is warm, and it hadn't been late. And she was leaving by eleven, was going to be home by eleven.

But now she's beginning to wish she'd driven, because at least then she would have resolutely refused that third drink, wouldn't be slurping up the last dregs of her second–or maybe she would have been, but she'd sit here a while longer and nurse the ice as it melts, and that would have been that. Two drinks, a little bit of music, and home to check on the young boy tucked away in his bed.

Now, though… Well, now she tunes back in to Robin's voice just in time to hear, "So this next song is by an artist I was introduced to a few months back, by a woman who is… stunning. Amazing. And, uh, rightfully quite pissed with me at the moment."

Oh.

Oh, no.

Oh, no no.

Robin clears his throat lightly, and Regina is suddenly glad for that third drink, because he's murmuring, "But I'm going to sing it anyway, because it seems I'm rather a masochist." Sadist, more like, she thinks, her stomach twisting in knots. What is it, she wonders? The song he's chosen.

And then she doesn't have to wonder anymore, because he says, "This is 'Last Request' by Paolo Nutini."

**.::.**

She reaches for her drink (another drink) as soon as he says it, just as he begins strumming the opening chords, and he can't look at her, because there are other people in the room, and they deserve a decent show. The show he prepared. The one he knows.

And he can't give them that if he's watching his own verbal darts fly in Regina's general direction.

So instead, he shuts his eyes, focuses on the music. The feel of the strings, the vibration, the melody, the lyrics.

_Slow down, lie down_

_Remember it's just you and me_

_Don't sell out, bow out_

_Remember how this used to be_

_I just want you closer_

_Is that alright?_

_Baby, let's get closer tonight…_

She'd turned it on post-lesson one Monday. Left it playing as background music while the three of them had eaten, while they'd cleaned up afterward. Several albums of Paolo Nutini later, the dishes were done and Robin had been leaning against her kitchen counter, just listening. An iTunes shopping spree later, and he'd had them all for his very own.

And now here they are, months later, and he's singing this song, because he wishes he could ask it of her, but knows he can't.

He should have asked her not to come tonight.

_Grant my last request and just let me hold you_

_Don't shrug your shoulders_

_Lay down beside me_

_And sure I can accept that we're going nowhere_

_But one last time let's go there..._

**.::.**

If. Fucking. Only.

So much for only two drinks–the third one is rapidly dwindling. She didn't have enough dinner to drink like this; she should order some food. Fries. Something carby to soak up all this booze, but it's too late for fries, you can't eat fries at God-knows-what past ten. She should just go home, but this third drink and that stupid song (it's her favorite of his, and had she told Robin that? She can't remember) have her butt stuck so firmly to the chair she might as well be superglued there.

So she won't go yet, but she'll go soon. Henry, and all that.

She'll finish  _this_  drink, and then go.

Except, she's only halfway through when August makes his way down to her end of the bar, covering Ruby's break. He's been serving the house all night while Ruby pours, and Regina wonders why. With that limp, you'd think it would be easier for her to handle the larger area. Not that he's not capable, he is that, it just seems… well…

She asks, and he smiles.

"I like to hear what people think of the new artists on their first night," August tells her. "Helps me decide who's coming back." He reaches into his pocket and drops a twenty dollar bill onto the bar, adding, "By the way, I believe this is yours."

Regina rolls her eyes, smirking. "Are we really going to fight over this?"

"Nope. You're going to take the money and accept that Romeo up there isn't the only one who can buy you dinner."

Regina lifts one brow skeptically. "Was that you asking me out the other night, then? Because I have to say, that's bold, right in front of Robin like that. Doesn't that violate some kind of 'bro code'?"

"I'm not his 'bro,' I'm his boss," August reminds. "But no, it wasn't. You're regulars, that ought to come with  _some_  perks, don't you think? A free meal now and then is the least I can do, especially after using your son for unpaid child labor."

"We haven't been very regular lately," Regina points out, and August just shrugs, leaning his weight forward onto the bar.

"You will be again."

He sounds so confident, almost cocky, and Regina wonders if it's because he thinks that she and Robin will make up, or if he thinks they'll move on, or if he thinks she'll eventually just fall prey to the lure of seasoned waffle fries and start bringing Henry around regardless of The Robin Situation.

But she doesn't ask that, asks instead, "So what are they saying? The people, about Robin."

"They like him. Of course, he's the regular Thursday bartender, and a lot of these guys come every week, so he has a home court advantage."

"So he gets to stay, then?"

"He gets to come back when Ruby is willing to work a Thursday," August corrects, and Regina shakes her head, smiling.

They pass some time, chatting about this and that, and so Regina's drink dwindles more slowly than she'd planned, sips taken in between a word here and there. He asks if she wants another when she's down to the dregs again, but Regina has the fortitude to shake her head this time.

"I think I'm good," she assures. "Go take care of the rest of your paying customers."

Five minutes later, Robin is singing Ray LaMontagne's "Let it Be Me," and Regina is taking the drink Ruby slides wordlessly in front of her without protest, because she's more drunk than sober now, and he's singing about how  _That's when you need someone, someone that you can call, when all your faith is gone… let it be me…_  and she's thinking of eggs and that mug of calming tea, and the way his shirt had smelled when she'd rested her head against his shoulder and wept, and she had been perfectly willing to let it be him and if he had just  _told_  her from the beginning that he was a colossal idiot with sticky fingers, she could have just been friends with him (probably wouldn't have been even that, because who is friends with the person who steals from their parents, but he could have told her  _sooner_ , could have done that at least, sometime after friends but before love), and then they would still be friends, and she wouldn't have to stand on his fucking porch wanting to talk about, God, about everything, and having to keep her mouth shut because he isn't hers to want anymore, can't be, her mother will eat him for dinner, chew him up and spit him out, and forget ever seeing his son again, and on her head be it.

"You want to talk about it?" Ruby asks with a hopeful grimace.

Regina must be drunker than she feels. And then she realizes she is glowering. So that might be a dead giveaway.

"No."

Ruby nods, mouth quirked into a half-smile, all sympathy. And then she lifts a shoulder, and offers, "You want to drink about it?"

Regina lifts her drink, mutters, "Pretty sure I already was," and takes another swallow.

"Right. Well, I'll keep 'em coming," the younger woman offers, and she's good on her word. Regina has barely drained her glass before there's another one being placed in front of her (August this time), and not a moment too soon, because Robin has just begun the last song of his set (he's thanked everyone for being a great audience, for letting him sing them a few songs, blah blah blah), and it's  _Sittin' on the_ fucking  _Dock of the Bay_.

Regina almost laughs. No, she does laugh, that was out loud, that little scoff.

August looks between her and Robin (he's a little blurry, a little swirly, she's definitely drunk now but five vodka tonics will do that to a woman, now won't they? Especially one who drinks heavily as infrequently as she does), and asks, "Should I make that a double? Or call you a cab?"

Regina glares sharply at him, telling him, "I'm not that drunk." But her knees feel like springs, even sitting here in her chair, and she's very aware of the cold, damp glass beneath her thumb, and also the smoothness of the bar against the heel of her hand, and the smell of buffalo wings coming from the guy two stools down, but none of those sensations quite seem to integrate, they're all separate pieces, and so maybe, yes, she  _is_  that drunk and, "But a water might be good."

"One water, coming up," August assures, and then he's gone, and all Regina is left with is Robin's voice, and more fucking memories. She wishes she could go back to that night, that first moment of connection and smack herself upside the head, tell herself not to get caught up in lost causes, and blue eyes, and deep dimples, because they will only lead her here. Drunk, on a work night, with her  _child_  at home, asleep, alone. While she listens to  _that man_  sing  _that song_ because of  _that night_ , and she's pissed now. Annoyed now.

He could have  _told_ her. Sure, he didn't tell her this was happening until a few days ago, and only then really after he'd been outed by someone else (did he even tell her, or was it just August?), and maybe that should have been a sign. But if this was going to be a nickel tour of their sordid tale the least he could have done was give her a heads up.

If he was going to do  _this_ , he could have told her.

_Sitting here resting my bones_

_This loneliness won't leave me alone_

_It's two thousand miles I roam_

_Just to make this dock my home_

_Sitting on the dock of the bay_

_Watching the tide roll away_

_Sittin' on the dock of the bay_

_Wasting time..._

August sets the water down in front of her, and Regina knocks back the rest of her drink before reaching for it. A bad decision, maybe, but when it comes to things relating to Robin Locksley, she's full of those.

What's one more?

**.::.**

He makes his way to the bar as soon as he finishes his set, both because he's thirsty and because she is there. Still there, despite the shit show he'd subjected her to. But she's been drinking–she hasn't been nursing her cups slowly, and yet they'd seemed full for much of the night. Rare were the occasions he'd glanced her way to find her glass near the bottom, and nobody drinks water with that sort of determination.

He hopes she didn't drive (but then, he didn't either, so if she did perhaps she'll let him ferry her home).

People stop him on his way to her, with kind words and hopes to see him perform again, and it's all Robin can do to be gracious to them. He's not sure where this urgency, this impatience, comes from, because she isn't moving. Hasn't moved.

When he reaches her minutes later, she's still sitting right where she has been all night. Nursing a pint glass now–water, he knows.

He draws a breath to say hello, but she turns before he can, and her eyes are dangerously sharp and yet still have the blurriness of the inebriated.

"What the fuck was that?"

Her words are venom, and yes, she is drunk. Her diction is sharp and clear, but it's strong language, and she's louder than he thinks she would be under the circumstances were she completely sober.

Robin steps in closer to shield their conversation, to urge her voice low enough that they don't cause a scene and then makes his excuse: "I didn't think you'd come."

"Henry told you I would."

He had. Robin hadn't believed him, was sure the boy had been hoodwinked into coming without his mother, but Henry had told him just the same.

"He's ten; he says a lot of things."

"You chose all those songs for me."

She's all stone, resolute in her anger, and he can't really blame her. Still, "I chose them for me."

Her expression shifts, betrayal and hurt cracking the granite of her facade, and her voice trembles with the intensity of them as she insists darkly, "You don't get to feel that way. You don't get to be hurt; you did this."

Robin ducks his head, tongue swiping out to wet his lips as her words pierce him right through the middle. This is the truth of things, then. The way she feels, what she's been trying to cover over with polite smiles and distant cordiality. She's still wounded, still bleeding, and he's just poured whiskey on the cuts and left them to sting.

She's wrong, he's a right to his hurt just as much as she does, but as the offending party he thinks perhaps he doesn't have a right to any sympathy. And he certainly doesn't have the right to hurt her all over again as he clearly has done.

So he meets her gaze again, his hand lifting automatically to find the soft skin just above her elbow (she's warm, and silky smooth, and he has missed the feel of her), telling her with as much sincerity as he can muster, "I'm sorry."

She doesn't pull away, but doesn't give an inch either, tightening her scowl and eviscerating him with her unrelenting scrutiny. He feels her arm shift slightly against his fingertips, closer instead of farther away, and rubs his thumb gently back and forth in response.

"Did you drive here?" he asks, and she shakes her head. That's something, at least. "Give me a few minutes to pack up my things and I'll walk you home."

"I can walk myself," she insists, tipping her chin up with that regal sort of air she's so good at taking on when she sets her mind to it.

But he knows her better, and he cares for her, deeply, so he's not letting her meander her way home alone and half-sloshed.

"You're drunk, babe," he points out quietly.

Regina's eyes narrow sharply. "How would you know?"

"Well, for starters, I was up there," He cocks his head back toward the stage, "Watching you drink all evening. I wasn't exactly keeping count, but I know you must have had several. And second, I'm about a foot from your face right now; I can tell the difference between sober Regina and drunk Regina from here."

He catches sight of Ruby over the top of Regina's head and grabs her attention, insisting, "I've got her tab," much to Regina's grumbling irritation.

And then suddenly, she's changing her tune, telling him, "You know what? Fine. Let's walk home," with a cavalier sort of bitterness that makes him think this will be the furthest thing from a pleasant stroll.

He's not wrong about that.

It's not more than ten minutes before Robin's guitar is tucked away safely in its case and locked away in August's office (he'll come get it tomorrow on his way to pick up Roland), and Regina's credit card is stashed in her pocket again, uncharged (she leaves a twenty on the bar, insists upon it, even though he has assured her that he's got her tab–but she borrows a pen from Ruby and scrawls PROPERTY OF AUGUST W BOOTH across the top of it, so he thinks perhaps this is something he shouldn't get into the middle of). She wobbles as she slides off her barstool, her eyes widening slightly as it hits her just how drunk she really is (it's still hitting her, he thinks, because she looks more unfocused by the minute).

When he loops her arm through his, she doesn't protest.

And then they're walking, out in the night. The air warm, a bit muggy now, her steps beside him regular but with the wide gait of the slightly off-kilter.

She waits until they're outside the bar, waits until they're past the parking lot even, waits until they're traversing the footpath that runs alongside the road before she starts in on him.

"I'm mad at you."

"I know."

Because what else can he say?

"I'm really, really mad at you."

"I know, babe." He lifts his hand to cover hers, rubs his palm over her fingertips (they're cold–the rest of her is warm, but her fingertips, they're cold). "I deserve it. I didn't think you'd come tonight. I should have told you not to."

"I'm not mad about tonight."

Regina starts to pull away, so Robin shifts his grip to her hand. She doesn't seem to mind, grasps his hand in hers with more force than he'd expected, her next few steps creating a shallow gulf between them. Robin holds tighter. She's not legless, but she wouldn't pass a roadside test, that's for sure.

"You should have told me sooner."

"I know."

" _Stop saying that_."

"I've only said it twice," he points out, although he's not sure what good he thinks that's going to do.

"Well, stop it anyway. Because you don't know." She looks at him then, shakes her head, her brow furrowed. "You're a jerk."

"Yeah," he agrees, docile as a kitten, because she's earned this, he thinks. The right to vent her anger. She gets to say what she wants tonight, for this walk home, and he won't fight her on it. Besides, she's right. "I am. I should have told you, long before I did. And I can say it was because of Roland that I didn't, but the truth is… it wasn't. I was scared of what you might do, truly, but more than that, I didn't want to lose you. I didn't want it to end."

The sound that comes from her is a wet, scoffing sort of laugh, and her shoulders shake with it, or with something else, he's not sure. When she looks back at him, her lashes shine damp in the light of the streetlamp they're passing and it makes everything in him curdle with shame.

"I really, really cared about you," she tells him, somewhere above a whisper but below normal speech, her voice thinning in places with the tension of a tight throat. God, he's a bastard. He doesn't deserve her, and never did, and he should have bloody known better than to get tangled up in her life at all, much less to reel her in and then break her heart the way he did. "I still do. And that's so unfair, Robin, it's so unfair, because you knew the whole time, you let me get closer and closer to you, and you always knew. And you  _lied_. I asked, and you lied."

He's got nothing to say to that. It's bald truth, there's no defense to it, so he stays silent. He doesn't think she's finished, anyway.

Sure enough, she looks away, her thumb sliding against his as they turn a corner, pulling apart slightly as their gaits fall out of sync, and then she says, "I wish I hated you. It would be easier than this."

He hates that her confession brings him any measure of relief, but it does. He doesn't think he could bear her hatred–could understand it, certainly, but couldn't bear it–so knowing hatred is something she can't quite muster for him makes him feel gratitude and guilt in turns.

"I'm glad you don't," he tells her quietly. "I care about you, too."

"You have no right," she grumbles, and she's probably right about that. He doesn't, not anymore, but here they are anyway. "Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

"I've already said it, love: I'm sorry."

She shakes her head, chuckles bitterly and weaves away a pace, then closer again. Robin draws her in toward him, slips his arm around her waist to keep her steadier as she says, "Well sorry doesn't fix anything."

"I know that. But I can't undo it." Her hip bumps against him as she walks, her weight pressing into his side. "I can't unhurt you. I wish I could."

Regina's head drops to his shoulder, and he can smell her shampoo, familiar and torturous.

"Well, if wishes were horses…" she trails off pointedly.

"Right."

They walk that way for a while, words fizzling out in favor of the quiet of the late evening, her steps uneven beside his, his hand clasped firmly at her hip to steady her.

And then a thought comes to him suddenly: "Who's with Henry?"

"I left him alone," she admits with a grimace, lifting her head off his shoulder and wobbling fiercely, the shift clearly doing something to her center of gravity. Robin tightens his hold on her as she gives her head a little shake, then adds, "He was insistent that he could stay alone for an hour. Says he does it every morning, and what's the difference, and I told him it was nighttime, that's the difference, but… Anyway, I sent him to bed. I wasn't gonna come."

"But you did."

"But I did."

"Why?"

"Because I missed you."

If the night was louder, or if there was more traffic on this road, if that damn frog that's been making a racket on their block for a week straight was on this one instead, he might not have heard her, that's how quiet her confession is.

He shouldn't do it, absolutely should not do it, but he leans over and presses a kiss to her hair in response. He can feel her exhale, can feel the collapse of her lungs as she sighs out, and his nose is all full of the scent of her hair as he murmurs, "I'm glad you were there. But I'm sorry it hurt."

"You're very talented. You should do that more often." She looks up at him, gives a little grimace and adds, "But maybe next time, sing Disney songs or something." He laughs at that, and she smiles as she adds, "Something that won't kick me in the stomach over and over and over, okay?" and how can she smile while she says something like that?

She's used to being kicked, he thinks, the thought sudden and unwelcome–a reminder that he is now one on the list of people who have hurt her and hurt her deeply. She's used to smiling through pain, and now she's done it for him, and that may be the worst of his crimes, in the end.

"Deal," he manages around a lump of guilt and self-loathing, and then there's more silence, another turn, and another before she knifes him right in the belly with a truth he already knows.

"I need to let go of you. If this isn't going to–" He thinks she presses in closer to him, but he may be imagining it. Either way, he presses his fingertips more tightly against her hip. "We can't do this, and I can't stay hung up on it. I can't stay hurt."

"I know." She glares at that, and he shrugs, asks, "What else am I supposed to say, babe? It's too much of a risk, yeah? With your mum and all?"

She nods, her face darkening as she mutters, "That vindictive bitch. If she could just–but she won't–so we can't ever… I need to move on. We both do."

They make the final turn, onto their block, and Robin fights the urge to slow their pace, to drag out each step. But Henry's home alone, and Regina could probably use a glass of water, and some aspirin, and her bed. So he keeps his steps just as they have been, and ignores the squeezing feeling in his chest, memorizes the feel of her warm against him, the weight of the arm she has slung round his waist, the height where her shoulder digs into his ribs. Takes in every last bit of her, because she's right, they do need to move on, and he'll likely not be this close to her again.

A thought occurs to him then, and he dreads the idea of lending voice to it, does not want to hear her answer. But he owes it to her, he thinks. He's caused her enough pain, and she's asking to be let go. It would be the right thing to offer, and for once, he wants to do the right thing instead of the selfish thing.

"Would you rather Henry take his lessons at my place? At least for a while?"

She stiffens, but doesn't take her attention off the sidewalk.

It would mean no more Monday nights. No more having to greet him at the door (or pointedly not greet him at the door), no more having to make pleasant small talk, no more having to see him at all if she doesn't want to. And if letting go is what she needs, then maybe what she really needs is space?

She hasn't answered, but she's slowed her steps. He tilts his head in an attempt to see around the dark hair that's fallen forward with her head tipped down as it is. He can't see her face, can't read her expression, has only her silence.

"Henry won't like it," he continues, because she hasn't. "He's already said as much."

Regina's head rises then, mouth drawn into a pout, brow knit. "You've talked to Henry about this?"

"It's what we were doing the other day," Robin explains, Regina's skeptical gaze on him all the while, no doubt judging whether she has another betrayal of her trust for which to be mad at him. "We turned that back room into less of a rubbish collector, so I could have a place for my music. Henry thought I was doing it so I could move our lessons there, and avoid you. The thought hadn't occurred to me, I just wanted a space to write–you can see how well that turned out–but maybe it's not a bad idea. At least, for a while."

She nods, twice, short little things, telling him, "That's probably for the best." And then she turns her attention back to the concrete beneath their feet and that's that. No more Monday nights at Regina's. No more wondering what it is she might be cooking, or listening for the sound of her puttering about and doing her housework. No more of her laugh, or her smile (though to be fair, those have been in short supply in recent weeks). No more Regina. He's been cut off, and worse, he'd been the one to wield the hatchet. For a moment, he feels breathless, and he wonders once again at how much he can feel for this woman he's not even been with, not really. How much he can ache for something that he never really had to begin with.

They're at her walk, headed toward her front steps, when she questions, "You're not going to fight me on this, are you?"

Her words aren't angry, or wary, just resigned. Disappointed, even. It somehow manages to make him feel even worse.

"Could I win?"

She looks back at him then, shaking her head sadly, tears welling in her eyes for a moment before she blinks them away.

"It would only draw this out. Only hurt you more. And I'd like very much to be done hurting you."

Her voice is hushed and tight as she asks, "Do you  _want_  to fight for it?"

"God, yes," he answers, dropping his hand from her hip at the bottom of her front porch steps in favor of gripping her hand as they ascend. When they reach her doormat, Robin stops, turning her to face him. He tucks her hair back, feels the softness of it against his fingers and lingers at the ends as he tells her, "If I thought it was as easy as trying to change your mind, I'd've spent the last few weeks doing that. But this is… I cocked everything up, and some things can't be fixed, yeah? You don't want something with no future, and so this…"

She's staring up at him, listening, and she's so goddamn beautiful, her face washed in porchlight, her eyes bottomless in the dark but so bloody full of everything she feels. He's going to miss those eyes. How's he supposed to make it through the week without those eyes?

He's not sure how it happens, not sure who moves first, but one minute they're staring at each other, him trying to explain why he's bowing out so graciously while she waits for something, anything, to ease her mind, and then next they're kissing. Desperately. His hands tangled in her hair, hers clutching in the back of his shirt. It's not chaste, and not soft; he backs her up a few stumbling steps until she hits the door with a soft bump. And then he kisses her some more, tilting his head to deepen it, groaning softly at the taste of her mouth, God, he wishes there was a way he could fight for this and win.

It's unfair, it's cruel, having to walk away when they both so badly want to stay here, to stay rooted, to twine themselves around each other and remain. She's doing her level best to try, one leg lifting to wrap around the back of his, and Robin steps in even closer, until he has her pressed snugly to the door against her back and him against her front, one hand swooping down to grope at her rear and tug her even tighter to him.

She moans softly and snakes a hand up somehow between them, raking her nails across his scalp before grasping at his hair and he will stop kissing her soon, he will have to, but not yet, not now. Now, he's going to nip at that soft bottom lip of hers (her mouth, he will miss her mouth nearly as much as her eyes–and not just the taste of it, nor the touch, but the shape and the expressiveness and the variety of reds and plums and pinks with which she colors it), then delve into her kisses again, drinking in every last bit of her that he can before he has to walk away.

Because this is it, the walking away. This will be it.

He'd thought they'd shared their last kisses before, had been sure of it, but he'd been wrong. He's been granted a do-over just for these few minutes, just tonight in the dark of the porch, and this time he will kiss her until she's burned into him like a brand. Until he knows she'll scar, and itch, and live in his skin long after he walks away.

She'd come to him tonight because she'd missed him, and he'd bled them both dry. His first set had been catharsis, the second closure. For both of them, he hopes. The beginning of the end of the pain. There's nothing that can draw them out, no amount of scrubbing that can clean the bad blood between them, so this is it.

And if this is it, he'll not waste his chance to trail kisses down from lip, to jaw, to neck, sampling the salty sweetness of her skin, delighting in the way she sucks in a breath as his tongue traces her pulse.

"Robin," she gasps, the hand still at his back grasping in the fabric of his shirt, her nails scraping dully through cotton. She presses her hips against him, and then her knee wobbles a little, the leg wrapped around his calf tightening slightly to counter it, and he remembers that she's in a bit of a state. Drunk on who knows how many rounds of whatever it was she'd been drinking (she doesn't taste like gin, or tonic water, or Sprite, just tastes like Regina, so if he had to wager a guess, he'd say vodka, not that it matters, not when he's kissing her).

His conscience presses in on him, has him skimming soft kisses back up (throat, chin, lips), and murmuring, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be kissing you like this."

She's breathless, asking, "Why? Because you robbed my parents?"

"Because I care about you," he counters, relaxing the grip he has on her arse and letting his hand rise to her hip instead. She lets her foot drop somewhat gracelessly back to the porch. "You matter to me, and in the morning, I don't think you're going to be very happy with me."

She quirks a brow the way she does, dismissive and with such sass. He's going to miss that, too.

"Considering the way the porch is spinning, in the morning I don't think I'm going to be happy with much of anything. But if this is it…"

Her meaning is clear: if this is the last time they kiss, she's not quite ready to give it up just yet. And he's in agreement there, so he ducks his head in again and presses his lips to hers, but without the urgency this time. He kisses her slowly, softly, traces her lower lip with his tongue, and then lets it tangle leisurely with hers, kisses and kisses until she begins to squirm ever so slightly in his hold.

Time's up, it seems.

Robin presses his lips to hers one last time, then tilts his head forward, brow resting against hers and he breathes into the space between their mouths, both of them panting lightly.

"Time to go inside?" he asks in a whisper.

He feels her forehead scrunch against his, opens his eyes to find her a blurry sort of cyclops in front of him, too close to focus on, so he lets them drop closed again.

Her voice is even quieter than his had been when she admits, "I really have to pee."

Robin snorts, and then snickers, pressing his lips to her brow. God, he loves her.

Fat lot of good it does him now.

"Well, then, I suppose I'd better stop snogging you senseless," he tells her, trying for levity despite the lead weight growing heavier and heavier in his chest.

"I'm afraid so," she sighs, clearly doing the same.

"Send Henry round on Monday night, usual time, alright?" She nods, her attention dropped to the vee of his collar, fingers fiddling there idly. She looks about as eager to go inside as he does to let her, but she's also shifting foot to foot in a very grown-up facsimile of Roland's pee-pee dance. "And take an Advil or two before bed; it'll help fend off the hangover."

"You'd know, huh?" she teases, but it's less sassy and more sulky, and this is terrible, it's all just bloody terrible. He wants to stand here on this porch for the rest of this night, and then the next one too, and all the ones after if it means he doesn't have to accept this goodnight as the goodbye that it is. She sighs, and then, "I should really go."

He translates as  _I really really need to go_ , and steels himself for separation, ducking in for one last press of his lips against the sweet softness of hers before stepping back.

"Goodnight, babe," he murmurs, reaching up one last time to tuck her hair back behind her ear (it never does seem to stay).

Her smile is all glass, fracturing as it stretches, and she whispers, "Goodnight," before fishing keys from her pocket and turning to unlock the door.

He breathes in the scent of her shampoo one more time while her back is to him, and then the door is open, and then closed.

And she's gone.

The walk home is less than two-hundred steps, but looking back from his front porch to hers, it might as well be miles.

**.::.**

In the morning, Regina has one thought above all others:  _There's not enough coffee in the world._

Not enough coffee, not a coffee strong enough, not enough Advil and not enough of whatever she might need to wipe away the sting of what had happened between her and Robin last night. Not to mention the humiliation of him having to drunk-stumble her home.

What had she been thinking?

Right. She hadn't. She'd been drinking. Had been drunk.

Had been drunk, and then had been kissing him, and what had that accomplished, exactly, aside from making her want to be kissing him again? Something that wasn't going to be happening anymore. They'd both agreed. At least, that's what she thinks they'd agreed on, her memory is a bit fuzzy on all the details, and truth be told she's trying not to dwell on them. It's better that way, easier on the heart.

She moving on. Letting go. For real, this time.

"You look like shit," Mal observes, as Regina walks into the break room, headed for the coffee, because there is  _not enough coffee in the world._  She's already had enough to make her jittery, but she still feels like her eyes are lined with glue and her head is speared through with something pike-like, her stomach an unsteady wobble. She should put something other than rocket fuel in it, she knows, but the idea of food right now, of the kind of food you need to soak up five vodka-tonics on a half-empty stomach, just makes her skin crawl.

"Long night," she mutters, reaching for her favorite of the office mugs and filling it.

"Business or pleasure?" Mal teases, and Regina grunts, the memory of Robin's tongue against the side of her neck rising starkly vivid from the sea of indistinct groping that had surrounded it.

"Sounds like if it was pleasure, you should get your money back."

Regina's mouth curls up at the side, a smirk she only half-feels and then drowns in coffee. It's good this morning–Sidney must have made it. He always brews it strong; Kathryn and Ashley both brew a pot that tastes like it  _wishes_  it was coffee.

"It was… a bad idea," Regina mutters (a good one in the long run, maybe, because at least now there's the prospect of closure, but in her present condition, it's hard to see the silver lining in her vodka-soaked raincloud), glancing at the door as Sidney strolls in, noticing her presence and giving her a once-over. "Let's just leave it at that."

He tilts his head, asks if she's feeling alright. She knows she doesn't look her best, but the fact that he's the second person to immediately comment on her less-than-ideal state this morning has her lifting a hand to run self-consciously through her hair. She must look worse than she'd thought.

"I'm fine," she dismisses. "Just got it into my head that I could drink the way I did in my twenties. And I'm paying the price today."

"Not as young as we once were," he sympathizes with a half-smile. She steps aside to give him access to the pot, with a mutter of  _Isn't that the truth_  as Mal tells her to pick up some coconut water.

"Doesn't taste all that great, but it'll clear up that hangover."

"Coconut water?" Regina questions, wrinkling her nose. She likes coconut. Coconut water, less so.

"Trust me," the other woman advises, headed for the door. "Take it from someone who hasn't lost the ability to hold her liquor."

"Ha ha," Regina mocks her retreating form, one hand rising to press against the ache in her skull, eyes dropping shut for a moment of blessed darkness. Mal's right; she really doesn't know how to hold her liquor anymore, it seems.

"Anything I can do to help?" Sidney offers.

Regina cracks an eye open to look at him.

"Push back the TLK call to this afternoon?" she requests with a grimace–it's unprofessional, pushing off work because she's hungover, but she's hoping that with a few more hours of recovery under her belt she'll have a brain that feels less like it's made of oatmeal and break-up blues.

Sidney's ever-present smile colors with pity. "Done."

Regina nods gratefully, then adds, "And keep Kathryn away from the coffee pot. I'm going to need more of this," she lifts her mug slightly, "if I'm going to make it to the afternoon."

He's laughing as she leaves, but he promises he'll keep the coffee strong and well-supplied, so she doesn't hold his amusement against him.

**.::.**

An hour later, he's in her office, toting a coconut water, an industrial-sized bottle of aspirin, and an organic chocolate bar. Medicine for both the head and the heart, and oh how badly she could use both today.

"Sidney, you shouldn't have," she tells him, reaching gratefully for the drink, opening it and taking a swig. It's not bad, better than she remembers (she glances at the label and makes a mental note to hit up Whole Foods the next time she gets miserably hungover and needs to rehydrate like this).

"It was no trouble," he dismisses. "I didn't bring lunch today, Whole Foods isn't far, and you didn't look like you were in any shape to duck out. Two birds, one stone."

"Well, I'm grateful," she says, and, "Thank you." She turns the chocolate bar so she can see the label better. Green and Black's Maya Gold. Another of her guilty pleasures. It won't fill her stomach, but a square or two won't hurt.

"It was no trouble," he repeats as she carefully opens the wrapper.

"You want a piece?" she offers, breaking off the top row of squares (it's three pieces, she only really wants two).

"No, it's for you."

Regina rolls her eyes (ow, who knew that could ache?), and breaks off that third piece, holding it out for him. "I insist. Delivery fee."

"Well, if you insist," he gives in, his fingers brushing hers as he takes the sweet from her grasp, popping it into his mouth and chewing. Regina breaks her chunk in half and slips a piece between her lips, letting it melt a moment on her tongue and savoring the familiar taste with a sigh. Her eyes drop shut (she's tired, how many more hours left in this day?).

When she opens them again a moment later, Sidney is looking at her (what's new?). She chews her chocolate, finally, as he takes a breath as if to speak. Then hesitates, lets it out. Sucks it in again.

Regina lifts her brows curiously, swallows her chocolate.

"Regina…" He glances down, then back up, and straightens his shoulders. Oh, she knows what's coming. "I was wondering if maybe... If you'd let me take you to dinner sometime. I know you've said no in the past, but that was then, and…" He smiles at her, nervous, and she debates shoving that other piece of chocolate in her mouth to buy more time for herself. But then he's smiling and pushing ahead, "You are a beautiful, intelligent woman, and I would love the pleasure of your company for an evening."

He does this–asks her to dinner, with flattery and charm. He does it at least once every few months, and she has always politely refused, and Sidney always smiles through his disappointment and tells her  _Maybe someday_ , and things go back to normal.

It's a practiced routine, almost, but today is anything but routine for her. Today her temple is still throbbing with every beat of her heart, a painful tattoo that makes it impossible to put Robin entirely out of her mind.

She needs to get over him. Needs to move past his blue eyes and his dimples and his stubbled jaw and warm kisses. Needs to get herself out of this rut of constant self-pity she's been mired in for weeks now. She's better than that, stronger than that. Has always been. And what she has with Robin–had with Robin–as heady as it was, has only left her once again alone and aching.

She's lonely, and she doesn't want to be. And she doesn't have to be. Not anymore.

Robin isn't the only man in the universe, isn't the only man for her–cannot be, because she cannot have him. Cannot bring him home to her parents. Cannot build a future with him.

And maybe she can't do those things with Sidney either, who knows, but… at least with Sidney, she knows what she's getting. A man who cares for her, who pays attention to the things she likes, who goes out of his way to see that she's happy even when she's given him no indication that he'll be getting anything in return. Yes, Robin had been all of those things, too, but they are letting go. Moving on. And Sidney, he's… a good man. And maybe he deserves a chance.

So today, when Sidney asks her to dinner, with those eyes hopeful but already growing resigned, she does the unexpected.

She smiles, and nods, and tells him, "You know what, Sidney? I think it's time I took you up on that offer."

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just trust me.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been told to advise you not to read the latter parts of this chapter while eating. You'll know when you get there.

 Regina takes a sip of her umpteenth cup of coffee for the day, and grimaces. Kathryn's work, most definitely. Who in the world would voluntarily drink such a weak cup of coffee? Of course, her fingers are a little shaky, so maybe a break from Sidney's rocket fuel is good for her…

It's 4:30 in the afternoon, the TLK call had gone well, and after a decent lunch Regina actually feels semi-human. Tired, and still a bit frayed around the edges, and experiencing sudden fits of stomach-twisting anxiety for some reason, but… semi-human.

And in an hour, she can go home. To her son, and her quiet little duplex. Maybe she'll let Henry play video games all evening. Won't even enforce bedtime, will just make dinner and tell him to please not stay up _all_ night, and then take a bath and crawl miserably into bed. Bury her head under the covers and put this day to rest.

Of course, one person's misery is another person's cakewalk, a fact she's reminded of when Kathryn returns to the scene of her coffee-pot crime, crossing paths with Regina for the first time all day. Regina does not look great – she's been pale and peaky all day, her eyes a bit dull – but Kathryn looks… wrecked. Like she's been sucker-punched and hasn't managed to catch her breath. Her eyes are red-rimmed and puffy, her nose rosy, her hair thrown up haphazardly. Her belt clashes horribly with both her skirt and her shoes. She looks like she got dressed in the dark in the middle of a bout of the flu.

But all it takes is one moment of eye contact for Regina to know that this has absolutely nothing to do with viruses, and everything to do with dirtbag men. (She hates that she has to think that; she's always _liked_ David, had always thought he was decent.)

She grimaces in sympathy, says gently, "You talked to him, didn't you?" her own pity party forgotten.

Kathryn nods, reaching for one of the communal mugs (the pot had been full when Regina had filled her own, Kathryn must have found it empty), and then stealing an anxious glance toward the break room door.

So she knows, then.

Her suspicions are confirmed when Kathryn looks back at her, her expression all pinched confusion, bafflement, when she whispers, "It's Mary Margaret Blanchard. He's been cheating on me with… with Mary Margaret."

Regina hopes she sells the look of surprise, but she's not exactly on her A-game today. "He told you that?"

Kathryn nods, filling her mug and then heading for the soy milk in the fridge. Regina keeps her grimace of disgust firmly suppressed. Weak coffee _and_ soy. It makes her stomach wobble again just to think of it.

"I couldn't come in here this morning," Kathryn confesses, and only then does Regina realize she hadn't seen the other woman at all for the first part of the day. No wonder the coffee had been consistently marvelous. (God, that's a selfish thought. She blames the residual hangover.) "Not knowing that it's… _her_. She has lunch with Leo on Fridays in the summer, what if… what if I ran into her? What would I even _say_?"

"I'm not sure discussion would be the first thing on my mind if I ran into the woman my husband was cheating with," Regina mutters, sinking into one of the chairs and letting her mug settle on the tabletop with a soft thunk. Kathryn joins her a moment later.

"Well, what am I supposed to do? Throw a punch?"

Regina thinks of Emma Swan, of Graham, of those occasional moments of burning anger even though she'd known, she _knew_ , that it was all for the best. She can't say she hadn't been tempted, that first time she'd seen the other woman after everything fell apart. But decking an on-duty police officer in the middle of a grocery store Starbucks hadn't seemed a wise idea…

"I don't think anyone would fault you the urge, under the circumstances," Regina reasons, her thumb finding the flaw in the ceramic handle of her mug. A little divet in the surface that her thumbnail always sinks into, picks at.

"I've never hit anyone," Kathryn dismisses. "Besides, I thought you… you like Mary Margaret. She's like family to you."

Regina's shoulder lifts and falls, an uncomfortable half-shrug. "Well… yes. But, that doesn't mean… Look, this is between you, and her, and David. But there's not really any good excuse for that sort of thing, is there?"

Kathryn looks down at her mug (still full, she hasn't even sipped yet) and confesses quietly, "He says he's in love with her." Regina feels her stomach plummet slightly in solidarity. It's one thing if an affair is about hormones, or boredom. Another if it's a matter of _feelings_. Of love. The first scenario is still terrible, but at least it's meaningless. "And me. But I think… I think more her."

Kathryn's voice goes thin at the end, her eyes welling with tears, and Regina reaches a hand over automatically, covering Kathryn's and telling her, "I'm so sorry."

"I don't know what to–"

They're interrupted by Sidney popping his head in, his face lighting up when he spies Regina. She stiffens, anxiety pinching around her navel. This is not at all a good time for anything he might have to say.

"Regina, I hoped I'd find you here," he begins, and then he seems to read the room, Regina's hand still wrapped around Kathryn's, the way the blonde is subtly wiping at her eyes. He looks between them and says dumbly, "I'm interrupting."

"You are," Regina confirms. "Can it wait?"

"Yes. Yes, of course, just…" He hesitates, then rushes ahead. "I was going to call and make a reservation for tomorrow, and I just wanted to know if you were feeling like Italian or Thai? And is 7:00 okay?"

Wonderful. Making date plans in front of the woman whose marriage is falling apart. Classiest move ever.

But drawing it out would just be worse, so she answers quickly, "Thai." Thinks of Robin, of manicotti and wine and kisses in a dark movie theater and says, "Definitely Thai. And 6:30 - I don't want to be out too late. Henry."

"Okay," Sidney confirms, an irrepressible smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and he pats the doorframe before leaving them alone with an, "I'll get out of your hair. Sorry to interrupt."

Regina nods, then slides her awkward gaze back to Kathryn, who has managed to stitch herself back together, to wrestle her tears under control and finally take a swallow from that mug. But as she lowers it back to the table, she looks at Regina, brow wrinkled, eyes full of confused concern.

"You're meeting with Sidney on a Saturday? Did something go wrong with TLK?"

Regina's stomach gives another uncomfortable wrench, and she shifts her gaze to her coffee, clears her throat slightly, and explains reluctantly, "No, it's a… it's a social… dinner."

"A social dinner?" Kathryn questions, and Regina squares her shoulders, meets her gaze head on.

"Yes."

"Like… a date?"

"I–" She feels the urge to make excuses, to word it somehow differently, but why? Aside from the obvious awkwardness of trying to transition from talking about David's cheating to Regina's dating a coworker, there's nothing wrong with calling a spade a spade: she's going on a date with Sidney. As odd as that may be for her to wrap her mind around, it's the truth. So she sucks in a breath and amends, "Yes. A date."

"You're going on a date? You and Sidney?"

Honestly, does she need to skywrite it or something? Regina fights the urge to roll her eyes, takes a moment to swallow down another mouthful of mediocre coffee, and confirms once again, "We are," before deflecting, "But let's not talk about that right now; we were talking about more important things."

Kathryn scoffs lightly and tells her, "I've spent the eighteen hours thinking of nothing but David. I am fine with talking about this, believe me. It's a welcome distraction. But…" She shakes her head a little, frowns again. "You don't even like Sidney."

Regina straightens her spine, lifts her chin a little. "I like Sidney," she insists. "We've worked together for five years, I like him just fine."

The smile Kathryn gives her is not entirely genuine. "Yes, but you don't _like_ Sidney. I thought you liked–"

"That's over," Regina shuts her down, thinking of Robin's mouth on hers last night, of the scrape of his stubble against her neck, the faint taste of whiskey on his tongue, the warmth of his – no. Stop that. Stop it. Moving on. She is moving on. "That's been over. For a while. And I need to let it be, I need to move on. Sidney asked me out this morning, and I couldn't think of a single good reason to say no."

Kathryn eyes her doubtfully for a moment, saying slowly, "I suppose…" and then adding, "He's a nice guy," just as Mal saunters in and heads for the coffee herself.

"Who's a nice guy?" the other blonde drawls, refilling her mug.

It's Kathryn who answers, "Sidney."

Mall pulls a face, a grimace of irritation prefacing her, "Ugh," and making a repeat appearance when she takes a quick sip of her coffee. She abandons the mug on the countertop, palms gripping the edge on either side of her hips as she leans her weight back against it and gripes, "He's walking around like the cat who caught the fucking canary, and all I can wonder is 'how much money did he just make that could have been mine?'"

Regina feels that pinching anxiety again and lifts her pathetic coffee reflexively, taking a deep swig in the hope that the bitter brew will push down that uneasy feeling. Dregs of the hangover maybe, she thinks (she hopes), a shakiness in her middle that has more to do with an excess of vodka than–

"None," Kathryn smirks. "He finally got a date with Regina."

Regina swallows her coffee forcefully, giving the other woman a look and a faintly admonishing, "Kathryn."

The cat may be canary-free, but it's definitely out of the bag. Thank God Mal is tight-lipped – with other people, anyway. It looks like she's about to have no problem wagging her jaw at Regina.

Her brows have crept up halfway to her hairline, one arched a bit higher than the other, just enough to make her disapproval of this particular choice clear. Oh, goodie.

"You're going out with Sidney?" she questions, her tone more appropriate for discovering gum on the bottom of your shoe than for learning the details of a coworker's private life.

It has Regina bristling, sitting taller, tightening her grip on her mug, defiant as she tells her, "I am."

Mal slouches a bit against the cabinetry, tilting her head and asking, "Why?"

"Because he's a good man," Regina reasons once again, "And he's kind, and–"

"Obsessed with you," Mal interrupts, bluntly.

Regina rolls her eyes.

"He is not obsessed. He has a crush."

Mal scoffs, reaching for her coffee again and then seeming to have second thoughts, holding instead of sipping as she retorts, "He's a grown-ass man. They don't have crushes."

"Then he has…" Regina struggles for a moment to find the right words for what Sidney feels. She thinks 'obsessed' is going a bit far, but there's definitely _something_ there. Had always been something there. An interest. A keen… an intense… a…. well… She settles on "...feelings for me," then dismisses, "But he's Sidney. He's harmless."

Those painted brows had fallen, but Mal raises one again now, a silent challenge that asks a deafening do-you-seriously-believe-that?

Regina huffs, shifts in her chair until she can slip her arm back, her bicep against the edge of the backrest, challenging, "You don't honestly think Sidney Glass is–"

"I think he pays an awful lot of attention to you," Mal tells her, taking another tentative sip of her drink before grimacing and dumping it unceremoniously down the sink.

"Nothing wrong with that," Kathryn mutters. If she'd said it a second later, Regina might have thought she meant the coffee, but in light of their earlier conversation, she knows better. David. The pain of being left behind.

Mal must know it too, because she levels Kathryn with a look and tells her to, "Leave your marital issues out of this," and then, "And learn to work a coffee pot, for God's sake."

Regina says her name in warning – her full name – at the sight of the light flush that creeps up from Kathryn's neckline.

"Mallory."

Kathryn gives a little shake of her head, leaves the comments where they lie and moves on, a practiced move after the persistent animosity between the two women. "Regina's right. Sidney's just… Sidney. We work with him every day." Her face falls then, a line digging in between her brows as she turns toward Regina. "Of course, we do work with him every day. What if it doesn't go well?"

"Then we know," Regina shrugs, aiming for nonchalance, even though her insides are feeling more and more like poorly tied shoelaces, all loops and knots and unevenness. "If there's no spark, he can move on and we can just…" Be incredibly awkward at every staff meeting, her brain supplies. Well-manicured fingers drum anxiously against the ceramic of her mug. "Pretend it never happened. It's not like he can't handle rejection, he's been turned down more often than a hotel bed. Usually by me."

Mal snorts, sets about brewing a fresh pot of coffee – starting by upending what's left of the current pot and sending it down the drain. Regina wonders just what exactly it's like to live in a world almost entirely devoid of tact. She's been known to be somewhat blunt herself, and she doesn't make a habit of mincing words, but she'd at least have waited until Kathryn left the room to wage coffee pot warfare.

Regina can see the tick in Kathryn's jaw, the annoyance, the I-don't-need-this-today irritation. She turns slightly in her chair, pointing her body more toward Regina and away from Mal, hyperfocusing on the conversation at hand. "So what exactly was different this time?" she asks, voice edged with tension, and Regina feels like she ought to answer if for no other reason than to continue this charade that there's not some sort of passive aggressive break room pissing match going on right now.

But when she tries to give an answer, she finds she comes up short.

"I… He…" Shit. Why _had_ she said yes? Robin, of course, and her drunken declaration that they both need to really, truly attempt to move on. But she doesn't want to admit to that. It seems petty. Weak. There are other reasons. Sidney-related reasons. She likes him – she does. As a person. As a co-worker. Sure, she's never taken him seriously as a romantic option before, she's never really seen him in _that way_ , but he has other good qualities. Mal dumps scoop after generous scoop of coffee grounds into a fresh filter as Regina tries to wax on Sidney's good qualities. "We've worked together for five years and he's been thoughtful and supportive and equitable and–"

Mal's snort has Regina clenching her jaw.

"I know that's what I always look for in a lover," she says, leveling Regina with a green gaze, "Equity."

Regina fights the urge to shift uncomfortably ( _Don't slouch, Don't fidget, For God's sake, Regina, pull yourself together,_ her mother echoes, echoes, echoes). Those were terrible reasons. Transparently terrible reasons.

Her voice is edgy, tense, as she admits, "He caught me on a bad day; I said yes. I was hungover and heartbroken, and… God, the man has asked me out about fifteen times, I feel like maybe it's time I at least give him a chance."

Mal doesn't miss a beat in her judgmental derision: "Well it's nice to see you reinforcing the idea that if a man is persistent enough for long enough a woman will just give in," and Regina feels her temper flash and flare.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" she questions, biting off each word.

"Exactly what I said," Mal mutters, and Regina presses her lips together hard and takes a deep breath in, and out, trying to find her inner calm before she rips Mal a new one of the insinuation that she's somehow betraying the sisterhood by going on one fucking date with a decent guy.

Kathryn shifts uncomfortably in the chair next to her, and the room goes thick and syrupy with tense silence. Mal snaps the lid of the coffee pot shut, pushes the button to set it brewing, and the soft steamy hiss of it warming up seems overly loud.

Regina's heart pounds, pounds, pounds, heavy in her chest, loud in her ears, her stomach twisting tighter and tighter until she feels vaguely nauseous again. She swallows heavily, then speaks clearly into the quiet, "Sidney isn't the only grown-ass adult going on this date, and I don't need your judgment."

Mal looks at her, lips pursing slightly, then turns her attention back to the coffee as it brews.

Kathryn sips her coffee, clears her throat slightly, sets it on the table. After another moment of stretched silence, she says softly, "Well. I have work to catch up on, so…"

She beats a hasty retreat, and Regina follows suit, pit-stopping by the sink to dump her own half-empty mug. When she's right next to Mal, the other woman says evenly, "He deserves better than to be your rebound guy."

"He's not a rebound," Regina mutters, her mug thunking down onto the countertop. "There's nothing to rebound _from_."

"Hungover and heartbroken," she parrots, and Regina lets loose a sigh, lifting a thumb to press at the spot just above her eyeball where a fresh headache is beginning to percolate.

She's testy, patience worn thin.

"I'm sorry, are you worried about him or sympathetic to him, because I'm getting mixed signals here?"

"I think you going out with the man who's followed you around like a lovesick puppy for years is a mistake," Mal says to her. "And I also think it's unfair to lead him on when what you really want to do is lick your wounds. You need to make yourself feel better about whatever it is you're trying to get over? Go fuck a stranger. Not the guy you know wants more from you than a pity date. You're better than that, Regina."

"It's just dinner!"

"For you," Mal points out. "For him, it's five years of devotion finally paying off."

Regina's stomach wrenches again, that point of pain on the edge of her eye socket throbbing harder. She doesn't need this. Doesn't have the energy for this. Doesn't _want_ to deal with this.

So she retreats, mutters, "I'm not waiting for that to finish brewing," and stalks toward the door.

She treats it like a triumphant walk-out, but somehow it feels like a defeat.

**.::.**

She doesn't go straight to bed when she gets home, but Regina does indulge in a long, hot bath. Henry is busy trying to set a new personal best in Mario Kart, a task that may not be furthering his mental development but is certainly keeping him occupied for a while. So she lights a few scented candles, pours in a generous dollop of the lavender bubble bath she loves so much, and turns the tap on just a hair shy of scalding.

It has her hissing when she sinks into the deep, but not entirely unpleasantly. The heat seeps into muscles kinked from a long workweek, and inadequate sleep the night before, has her sighing and easing herself down even further into the fragrant froth. Perfection.

She just has one more thing to get out of the way, and then she's going to stay right here and soak for a while.

While her hands are still dry, she reaches for her phone.

It rings three times before Mary Margaret picks up, and for a second, Regina thinks she's not going to. A suspicion that becomes even more pronounced at the shaky, tentative, "Hello?" she gets from the other end of the line.

"It's Regina," she greets unnecessarily, letting her eyes drop shut, the overhead light painting the backs of her eyelids in dull orange. "I was wondering if you're free to sit for Henry tomorrow."

The rush of breath on the other end has Regina rolling her eyes, closed or not. "Oh," Mary Margaret sighs. "Oh, of course, yes, I can do that, yes." The younger woman clears her throat, and Regina can almost imagine her nervously and needlessly fixing her Peter Pan collar, or her pastel cardigan or whatever false costume of virtue she's wearing today.

Regina's own bitterness and anger surprises her. She's not the one who's been cheated on, and it's not as if she doesn't have double loyalty in this situation. But still, Mary Margaret was wrong. Simply wrong. It takes two to tango, sure, but only one to call it off, and she finds herself bitterly disappointed in the other woman for not doing just that. She'd always thought she was smarter… better.

So Regina can't help it – she's had a long day, full of her twisted emotions, and Kathryn's, and Mal's harping on her life choices, and so she can't help it, can't resist asking coolly, "Did you think I was calling about something else?"

Mary Margaret's stalling _Um…_ is both comical and damning.

Regina puts her out of her misery, and perhaps into a new sort, with the confession, "Because I do know about that, too."

She opens her eyes, then, sinks a little lower into the bath and studies her toes where they peek out of the water. They're coated with suds, but she can still tell that her polish is starting to chip.

"Regina, I–"

"Don't need to make excuses to me," Regina cuts her off. "I'm not one of the people you hurt."

"You… sound angry…" Mary Margaret points out, and Regina pinches the bridge of her nose, rolls her head slightly against the tile behind it, and sighs, and nods.

"Well, yes. Probably. But I don't really have a right to be. What you do with your personal life, however ill-advised, isn't for me to judge." After all, she's the one about to go out with a man she barely likes in an attempt to get over her puppy dog crush on the man who robbed her parents. It's not as though she's a paragon of dating virtue herself.

"I…" Mary Margaret begins, stiltedly, "Don't know… what I'm supposed to say right now."

"You're supposed to say, 'I will be there at 6pm tomorrow, so you can get ready for your date instead of worrying about throwing together dinner while also picking out cute shoes.'" And possibly getting a pedicure, she muses silently. She has a date, after all. It may just be Sidney, but he at least deserves the same attention to herself she'd give anyone else on a first date.

The other woman's tone is lighter, relieved again, when she parrots, "I will be there at 6pm tomorrow, so you can get ready for your date instead of thinking about dinner."

"Close enough," Regina drawls.

"So, who's this date with? Giving the sexy guitar player another chance, are we?" Mary Margaret asks, trying for levity, although the veneer of awkwardness still clings to every word shared between them. Still, what Regina had said was true: Mary Margaret's sex life, however illicit, isn't hers to judge. As long as it's not happening under her roof, it's not her business. And she can't in good conscience ask Robin to babysit while she goes and spends her evening with another man, nor can she overtax Granny Lucas's already generous hospitality, or subject herself to the third-degree skewering she'd get if she asked either of her parents. So. Staying on good terms with the babysitter… well, she has to.

"No," she dismisses. "Not Robin. Sidney Glass, actually."

"Sidney?" Mary Margaret asks, and Regina thanks her stars that her tone had been far less suspicious than Kathryn's had been at that little revelation. "He finally talked you into it, huh?"

"Caught me on the right day, I guess," Regina sighs. "Anyway, he's picking me up at six-thirty, and I don't want him hanging around. Waiting around," she corrects. "For me. And I'd rather this not become office gossip unless it goes anywhere, so please don't tell your father."

"Of course not," Mary Margaret swears, but Regina's known her long enough to know she shares every little detail of her life with Leo (probably not the affair, Regina thinks), so she reiterates.

"I mean it. And now I know that you can keep a secret, for the most part, so–"

"I won't say anything," Mary Margaret insists, but her tone is cautious when she continues, "But… you do know Sidney and my father are very good friends."

"Yes."

"And Sidney's been interested in you for… a very long time, Regina."

Her eyes roll on reflex. Maybe she _is_ about to get a lecture from the adulteress, after all. Round two of Regina-What-Are-You-Thinking for the day.

Her voice is all sharp edges when she says, "I know that."

"So I'm not going to tell Daddy, but don't be surprised if, you know, he knows."

Shit. She hadn't thought of that.

Maybe Kathryn was right and dating coworkers _is_ a terrible idea. But then, how good of an idea is dumping them before you even get to the date? Probably worse. Definitely more awkward, in the long run.

She'll give him a chance, see how it goes. If it's terrible, then, well, they'll both know. No harm, no foul.

"Right." She sighs, bends her knees and draws her toes back beneath the steamy surface of the water. "Well, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. See you tomorrow?"

"Yes. Six PM, on the dot."

"Good."

"And Regina?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you. For not… holding all this against me."

She feels another twinge in her middle, an echo of the persistent unease she's been feeling all day. The last thing she wants is to validate someone else's shitty behavior, but, well… not really her fight.

So she murmurs, "Yeah," and then, "Goodnight," and then she hangs up the phone and lets it drop to the bath mat, sinking even deeper into the tub. She closes her eyes as steamy water swallows her shoulders, fragrant bubbles tickling at her chin, and she tells herself not to think anymore. Not to worry anymore. To just breathe, and soak, and let all her twisted emotions leach out into the bath and swirl down the drain.

It doesn't really work, but she tries anyway.

**.::.**

Robin is in a foul mood until precisely the moment he picks Roland up from daycare. He'd woken up thinking of Regina, and spent the day brooding over her. Wondering if she'd woken up terribly hungover, fingers itching to text, legs restlessly desiring a stroll next door. Just as he's been for weeks now.

So he'd been surly and annoyed – at himself, her, her mother, fate, what have you – until the moment he saw Roland's massive dimpled grin, until he'd heard the boy shout "Daddy!" and launch himself on chubby legs across the yard of the daycare. He'd scooped him up, and tossed him into the air, grinning at the delighted shriek his boy let out before falling back down into strong and steady hands. He'd clutched him close, Roland's arms squeezing around his neck as he'd continued to giggle, and thanked God for the millionth time that he'd been blessed with a child.

They'd met John for pizza, he and his boy, and Robin had grinned at the way that Roland's eyes went wide as cheese stretched from his mouth to his slice, gooey and elastic as he'd pulled it back and back, ending up with a string of cheese and sauce down his chin when it finally broke. There'd been a voice in his head, feminine and firm and kind, some amalgamation of Marian and Regina chiding _Don't play with your food, Roland_ , but damnit the mothers hadn't been there, this had been a time for men, and so Robin had stayed tight-lipped and reached for a super cheesy slice himself.

When they'd gotten home, there'd been playtime with Tuck, which largely involved tossing a tennis ball across the yard and letting both dog and boy run themselves ragged in competition to reach it first. Tuck always made it to the ball first, but they've become thick as thieves, Roland and the mutt, and Robin had noticed the dog fiddling around the ball now and then, biting at it without retrieving it, pawing at it until Roland was close enough to reach for it before snatching it up. Every once in a while, he'd even let Roland steal it away from him, the slimy thing raised triumphantly in a small hand as he'd cried, "Got it, Daddy! I got it!"

When the sky had gone dark, and the fireflies were winking along Granny Lucas' garden, he'd shepherded his son inside, into the bath, made bubble beards and bubble hats, and drawn stick figures and stars and music notes on the tiles in colored soap. Roland hadn't even made it halfway through his bedtime story, had sacked out dead-weight in Robin's bed four pages in.

It had been splendid.

And today has been much the same. There'd been cereal for breakfast, and then they'd taken Tuck to the park, where he'd trotted about at their feet as Roland and Robin had worked on the boy's monkey bar skills. The slats are still a bit too far apart for a boy of only three and a third, but if Robin holds him firm at the hips and helps him swing wide from bar to bar, they can manage. He likes to think the swooping sound effects between each bar give him extra special Dad points. At the very least, they make his son laugh.

By lunchtime, Robin is wondering how it is that little boys have so much energy, and how trotting after such tiny bodies can be so exhausting. It's not as though the boy can sprint, but as they eat their peanut butter and jam sandwiches, Robin feels his eyes droop in tandem with Roland's. Thank God it's nearly naptime. Dad may need a nap today, as well.

He doesn't get one.

As soon as Roland is down on the sofa, Robin hears the slap-slap-slap of trainers along the front walk, and a shouted, "Robin!"

The last thing he needs is a nap-deprived preschooler, so he rushes toward the door, heading Henry off on the porch. Roland will never sleep if he knows the older boy is about, enamored as he is by him. He'd want to show off his new bruise from the park, and his new shoes that light up when he walks, and all manner of things.

So when Henry climbs the stairs, breathless, Robin lifts a finger to his lips and says softly, "Roland just went down for his nap."

He expects disappointment, or perhaps restraint, or… well, anything other than what he gets, which is a half-panicked, entirely-stricken, "She's going out with Sidney!"

Robin blinks. Gapes. Feels his stomach sink down into his shoes.

"What?" he questions dumbly, brain still struggling to switch tracks and catch up.

"My mom. She's going on a date with Sidney. _Tonight_."

No… that can't be right.

"Sidney? From her office?"

She doesn't even like Sidney. I mean, she likes him alright, but she always talks about him a bit like one would talk about that person you befriend out of circumstance or pity. A coworker, not… a romantic interest. At least, he hadn't thought so, but would she even have told him if she'd fancied someone else?

"Yes," Henry nods, beginning to pace the length of the porch, looking positively at wits' end as he exclaims, "They have a date tonight! I heard her talking to Mary Margaret on the phone about whether she could come earlier so Mom could run some errands first."

"I see."

So clearly she's not having as hard of a time as he is with this whole "moving on" business. But then, it was her idea, wasn't it? Was this what she had in mind, even then? Was she thinking of this man, this date, when she told Robin they were done for, for good?

"We have to do something!" Henry insists, shaking Robin out of his thoughts.

He furrows his brow, asks, "Do something?"

"Yes!" He's all serious eyes, determined chin, his mother's child through and through, stubborn and sure as he declares: "She can't go out with him."

He can't say he disagrees with the sentiment, not in his heart, but he'd agreed to this. So he has to suck it up. Be the adult. Even if every word feels like glass shards scraping over his tongue.

"She's a grown woman, Henry, I'd imagine she can do whatever she likes."

He tries to make it dismissive, tries to keep it calm. Tries not to sound like he's half considering drowning his sorrows, half considering tracking this Sidney down and punching him in the face.

"But she doesn't _love_ Sidney," Henry says, like that should end the argument. Like that should be it. Like life should be so simple.

"Not before the first date, no, I'd imagine not," Robin reasons, moving to lean against the porch rail, arms crossing over his chest, fingers pressing into his biceps, hard. He aches unpleasantly somewhere in his middle from a pang of jealousy he has no right to feel.

Henry's mouth pinches, his head shaking.

"No, Robin, she loves _you_. I know she does. She's just too stubborn to admit it, just like you are."

He's standing there, trainers rooted to the decking, arms crossed defiantly. His brows lift in an expression that's so much Regina it makes Robin want to laugh and cry in turns. He certainly learned how to throw a snit from her, that's for sure.

"Henry–"

"Don't you want her to be happy?" Henry questions, all accusation, and challenge, and bluster.

"More than anything," Robin tells him, "But–"

"Then you need to go over right now and tell her how you feel, because I know she'd be happy with you, and–"

"Henry, enough," Robin cuts him off, perhaps a bit more sharply than he'd intended. It gets the job done, though. "Your mum knows very well how I feel, and I know very well how she feels. But–" He stops, moves to sit on the bench along the wall and urges Henry to stand right in front of him, guiding him loosely by the shoulders and looking him dead in the eyes. "You need to listen to me this time. Your mum and I aren't going to be together. I fucked up, alright? I screwed it all up, and it can't be fixed, and your mum and I – we have agreed – it's not happening, Henry. I've got to accept that, you've got to accept that–"

"But–"

"No, listen to me," Robin insists. "Please. I broke your mum's heart. I betrayed her. She doesn't trust me right now, and she shouldn't. I've earned that. And the last thing she needs is me sniffing around her door like a kicked puppy, or you trying to play matchmaker when she's trying to move on." He watches Henry's chin jut out further, his jaw clenching, watches hurt filter into the boy's eyes and feels wretched, but well, what's new? "I hurt her, deeply, and I don't want to hurt her anymore. So no, Henry, I won't go fight for her, and she knows exactly why, and she understands that. _We've_ talked about it. And she's a right to date whoever she pleases. I'm sorry if that upsets you, but it's her right, Henry, and I respect that."

Henry wrenches out of Robin's light grip, glaring mutiny now, backing up a pace or two.

Robin lets his hand drop into his lap, and waits.

"I was wrong about you," Henry says, finally, sizing Robin up as he does. "I thought you were good enough for her, but I was wrong."

"No argument there," Robin mutters to himself as the boy turns tail and stomps his way off the porch and down the walk.

Robin drops his head into his hands, scrubs his palms over his face, feeling very much like someone who's just crashed on a sugar high.

He should go back inside, have a bit of a kip while Roland is conked out, but he doesn't think he could manage now anyway. The ease of last night and this morning have been replaced by a jumbled mess of thoughts he's no right to.

Chief among them the itchy dread of knowing in a few hours' time, the woman he – yes, alright – loves will be on the arm of another man, and on his honor, there's nothing Robin can do to stop it.

**.::.**

He's early. Not by much, but he's early.

Sidney shows up at 6:15 on the dot, clutching a dozen long-stemmed red roses. Regina thinks immediately of two people she'd rather not: her mother, who favors this particular bloom, and Mal, who she can practically see over Sidney's shoulder, haunting her with a look that says I-told-you-so.

This is not just a date, it is The Big Date. It was probably a mistake.

It only takes her a moment to recover from the impact of realizing that her internal reaction to the gesture is all wrong, and then she smiles, tilts her head a little and tells, him, "Thank you, they're gorgeous," before stepping back and urging, "Why don't you come in for a second, while I take care of these."

He follows, mouth pulled into a pleased little curve as he steps into the foyer.

She urges, "I'll be right back," not wanting to give the impression that they're going to linger – early he may have been, but she was ready to go. And frankly, Henry's been in a mood all afternoon, clearly unhappy that she's going on a date tonight with someone other than a particular sticky-fingered guitarist (don't think about him, tonight is not about him), and the less time Sidney spends in the house, the less likely he is to come across the surly, snappy side of her son's petulance.

Regina's heels clack against the hardwoods as she heads for the kitchen, Mary Margaret poking her head out into the hallway and smiling warmly at their guest.

"Sidney," she greets. "It's good to see you." His _You, too_ is trampled by her soft gasp of excitement at the sight of Regina's cargo, and then a grinning, "Give those to me. I'll get them in some water, so you two can get going."

She says the whole thing with the air of a mother on prom night, a hint of sing-songing to her subdued excitement, smiling all the while. Regina is just glad to get out the door more quickly.

So she acquiesces without question, hands over the flowers, and tells Mary Margaret where to find the vase she'd meant to put them in, before ducking her head into the den to say goodbye to Henry. He barely looks up at her, a silent protest of her romantic choices.

She's halfway down the hall, headed back to the foyer, when she catches sight of herself in the mirror just beside the front door – the little one on the wall above the table where she keeps keys, and mail, and, at the moment, her clutch. She looks terrible. Not a hair out of place, makeup flawless, lips a subtle peachy nude, her dress a teal blue that pops against her olive skin. She looks soft and beautiful, she thinks. She hopes. But those lips are scowling, that face is… all wrong. She looks like she's headed for the gallows.

Regina swallows down the realization that her stomach is still jittery – but it's not excitement like it ought to be. Not the fluttery anticipation she'd felt as she'd crossed the yards between her place and Robin's weeks ago (he'd given her roses, too, she recalls suddenly; white and pristine and sweet-smelling). No, this is an anxious sort of nervousness, the sort of uncertain dread with which she approaches dinner with her parents.

Great.

Well.

This is no way to start a date.

 _Pull it together, Mills,_ she tells herself, pausing for a moment just shy of the stairs to take a deep breath in, and out, eyes dropping shut for a moment. She's going to go out, and have a nice time, with a nice man. She's not going to fret, or fidget, or think about things (people) she absolutely should not be thinking about. She's going to have a very good night.

Mind over matter.

Here she goes.

When she reaches the foyer again, Sidney is parked on the stairs, sitting comfortably a few steps up, sport-coat clad elbows resting on grey-slacked knees. He smiles at her, and it's warm and full of affection, his voice low and sincere when he says, "I'm just realizing I forgot to tell you how beautiful you look tonight."

Regina drops her gaze for half a second, reminding herself that this is a date, not a business lunch, and he _should_ be complimenting her looks, her… everything. Somehow she hadn't realized until just this moment how odd the paradigm shift would really feel.

But it's there, that shift, and so she tries her hand at flirtation, too, telling him, "Thank you. You clean up pretty well yourself." (He does. He looks nice, she thinks. Handsome.) And then, "Shall we?"

He smiles – hasn't really stopped smiling, not since she answered the door – and holds his arm out for her to take. It's a little silly, a little old-fashioned, but Regina reaches for him anyway, lets him lead her out of the house and down the steps to his double-parked Lexus.

She does not look to the left, does not turn her head toward Robin's place. Refuses to. So she misses a glimpse of him standing on the porch, freezing at the sight of her, at the hug of her dress, at the curl of her hair, at the man who is guiding her down the two steps where the lawn slopes toward the street. She misses him, but he watches her until Sidney has closed the passenger door, catches the sight of her tucking her hair back behind her ear through the window.

And then he whistles for Tuck, urges the dog to finish up his damned business already, curses the fool thing's timing, and disappears back inside.

**.::.**

The drive is quiet.

Maybe too quiet.

There's music on the radio, something innocuous. Jazz, turned down low. Enough to fill the air, but not to impede conversation. If there were conversation.

She's alone in a car with Sidney Glass, still quite a few minutes from their destination, and suddenly she can't think of a word to say to him. A word that isn't work-related, anyway. They could fill the whole drive with things to talk about if the office were in play, but this is a date, not a working dinner, so she pushes all that to the side and tries to think of something else.

All she manages to come up with is, "You don't usually wear cologne."

She'd never noticed how Sidney smelled before, not until now when she knows something has changed. But when she thinks back on it, he's always smelled like fabric softener and soap and something… manly? Some sort of generic male scent–aftershave, maybe, or deodorant.

But tonight, the car smells like cologne. Not overpoweringly so, but it's different.

"Is it bothering you?" he asks, concerned, sparing a glance from the road to ensure he's not offended her somehow before they even made it to dinner.

"No, I like it," she tells him. "It smells good."

He'd lost that smile for a moment, but it comes back at the compliment, his hands shifting slightly on the wheel as he tells her, "Thanks. It was a Hanukkah gift from my niece. I haven't had many excuses to wear it."

Regina blinks. He has a niece. She never knew that. Five years working beside Sidney, and she's not sure she even knew he had siblings. Also, "You're Jewish?"

"I'm not," he tells hers. "But my brother's wife is."

Huh. Sidney Glass has a brother. Who knew?

"What's her name?" Regina asks. "The niece."

"Jasmine," he tells her, and then she asks how old, expecting her to be young, expecting someone Henry's age, or maybe a little older. She's surprised when he answers, "Twenty-three."

"An older brother, then."

Sidney chuckles, and nods, says, "We share a birthday, actually – Jasmine and I. I always tell her she's the best birthday present an uncle could ask for."

It breaks the ice – talking about kids, about family. It turns out he not only has one brother, but two – one older, one younger. They don't live close but they _are_ close, talking frequently, and Regina can't help but think how nice that must be. How different from her own lonely upbringing (she has cousins, but they're not close – Mother isn't exactly a big draw for family gatherings, not that she tells Sidney that). It has a little kernel of melancholy unfurling in her chest, but she squashes it, tries to focus on the conversation. On actually getting to know this man in a way she hasn't ever bothered to in the last half-decade.

The conversation carries them through the rest of their commute, and by the time they arrive at the restaurant, she feels less uneasy.

That lasts about ten minutes.

The place is nice, peaceful ambience, serene lighting. Comfortable chairs, and nicely printed menus full of the usual Thai fare.

They've tapped out the family topic – or at least tabled it for the time it took to handle valet and seating – so Regina opts for a benign, "How did you find this place?" to restart the conversational train and gets a cold-water rush of dread for her trouble.

"Leo suggested it, actually." Sidney tells her. Regina feels the statement like pins and needles up her spine. "It's one of his favorites."

"Oh," she says, carefully neutral. "So does he… know about this?"

The thought makes her guts twist again. Kathryn and Mal knowing was bad enough, but at least she knows they'll keep their mouths shut, what with Kathryn so wrapped up in her own failing marriage and Mal being... well, Mal. Leo knowing, though, that's… That's not something she'd prefer, to say the least. Not that he's a gossip, far from it, but… he's her employer. And this is her love life. And she's suddenly feeling very, very private.

"He does," Sidney answers, a bit of suspicious edge to his voice when he asks, "Is it supposed to be a secret?"

"No, no…" Regina dismisses, because, no, it's not a secret. It's just… It's just that she doesn't want anyone to know she's doing this, she realizes, with a rush of heat she hopes doesn't color her cheeks. She shouldn't be here. They shouldn't have done this. But she can't tell him that, it might crush him – and she's determined to give him a chance, just this once, so she presses her lips into a smile and excuses, "Just… Office fraternization, and all that."

Sidney's expression shifts, the suspicion melting away into a sort of serene adoration, and he reaches across the table for her hand. Their fingers weave, his cool and a little clammy, the pad of his thumb soft and uncalloused as it runs across the length of hers. He gives her digits a little squeeze and assures, "Leo won't mind this. I promise."

"Still. In the future…" Her fingers curl against his, and then ease away, back, reaching for her water as she finishes, "Maybe we keep things between us until we know if they're…"

God, how does one tactfully finish that sentence?

"If they're..?" he waits.

"Where they're going." It's diplomatic enough, she hopes. "I just don't want to be the latest hot topic in the office rumor mill, that's all."

He nods, one corner of his mouth lifting. She's never really noticed his dimples before. Surely she'd noticed they were there, but she'd never _noticed_ , them. She does now, though, and they make her think of other dimples on another face. She misses that other someone, then, suddenly, fiercely. Takes another deep swallow of water and tries to push him out of her mind.

Sidney gives her a reassuring, "Of course," and "No gossip from me, I promise," and all the while she's thinking of Robin.

She wasn't ready for this.

Moving on is all well and good (not that she has anything to move on _from_ , they weren't anything yet, not really, so why is this so _hard?_ ), but she thinks maybe she rushed it.

Or maybe she's just thinking too much.

Telling herself one more time to snap out of it, Regina shifts her attention to the menu in front of her and tries to make a decision. No Robin. No office gossip. No self-criticism. Just massaman curry, and lemongrass soup, and coconut sticky rice. Just one simple decision, not a sea of murky ones.

Still, she debates internally – sweet and sour or pad thai? Offer to split fried rice, or save the calories for the inevitable starch that will come with her own entree? Indulge in a thai iced tea, or stick to water? Or wine? Does she want a drink? Does she _need_ a drink? She should stick to water, maybe get something steamed, something light. She'd already had a sandwich for lunch with Henry, one with too much mayo, she should go for something lean, something–

The thoughts start to rush, and she catches herself. Stops, and takes a moment to clear her mind, then thinks slowly and clearly. She's a healthy weight. She has been eating well. She is not letting the chaos of her life become chaos in her diet. She is fine. She is good. She is ordering shrimp pad thai.

Decision made.

She doesn't even realize Sidney had been attempting to talk to her until she puts her menu down and finds him watching her, frowning slightly.

"Regina… Is everything alright?" he asks, "Am I boring you?"

Her stomach swoops uncomfortably. Shit.

As she answers, she shifts in her seat, sits a little straighter, leans a little closer. All the physical ways one is supposed to show interest and attentiveness, she does.

And she assures him, "No. No, you're not. You're… wonderful. Really. I've just had a…" _Revelation that I'm more of a pathetic mess than I thought I was_ , she thinks, but she's not about to say that. But what _can_ she say? How does one exactly put into words the slow unraveling of an ordered life? She settles on, "A strange summer, I guess. Hard. And it's just occurring to me that I haven't been very social – outside of my family, which is also… hard. So this is…"

She wants to say "anxiety-inducing" or "too much" or "forced," but she doesn't. She doesn't say anything. She is pathetic and says nothing, just shakes her head a little, lets the statement hang.

"Do you want to talk about this strange summer you've been having? Or the hard family?" he asks, reaching toward her side of the table again but stopping before he makes contact, like maybe he thinks better of trying to touch her. She is grateful and embarrassed all at once.

"I don't," she shakes her head again. "Not even a little bit." And she sighs, apologetic as she explains, "I thought this would be fun, a good way to…" Use Sidney as her rebound guy, she thinks with a little sinking sense of shame, and there's Mal beyond his shoulder again, mocking her. So she lies, "have a nice evening with a kind man, and I am so wrapped up in my own head right now that I'm just… a terrible date, aren't I?"

She lets out a little laugh, a dry, thin chuckle. And here Kathryn and Mal thought _Sidney_ was the bad apple in this equation. But no, he has been attentive, and probably charming, and open, and she has been stewing, and brooding, and spacing out, and thinking of other men. She's really winning the night, that's for sure.

But Sidney is Sidney, so he assures her, "Not at all."

Regina doesn't buy it.

"No, come on," she dismisses, gesturing vaguely around. "We're in a nice restaurant, you brought me beautiful flowers, and I am… just… terrible."

She's picking at her nail polish, she realizes. A bad, nervous habit. One Cora had tried to break her of when she was fifteen, criticising and scolding, and then finally outright banning nail polish in the house altogether. Regina separates her hands deliberately, presses her fingertips subtly to the tablecloth and tells herself to stop it. To pull. Herself. Together. She is in public for God's sake, and maybe nobody at the next table over will realize she's having a slow acceleration of anxiety, but Sidney can certainly see it, and that is public enough.

He does take her hand then, slides his between her skin and the tablecloth and folds her fingers in his own. They're warmer now, somehow. Not warm, but warmer, she thinks. Or maybe she's colder.

"Regina," he says, and something in his tone has her meeting his gaze and holding there while he continues, "there's nowhere in the world I'd rather be than across this table from you. Whatever's going on in your head, whatever strange summer you've had, however hard things are with your parents, I don't care. You don't ever have to hide from me. Just be here." His fingers squeeze, and then let go, and he smirks a little when he says, "I'll be a great distraction, I promise."

He's trying for humor, and she tries to let him. Tucks her hair behind her ear, and swallows, and nods. She feels warm, flushed, she's blushing. Shit. God, this is mortifying, letting _Sidney Glass_ see her vulnerable and stupid like this. They need to move on to a different topic. Something superficial, something… easy. Something not her.

So Regina takes a deep breath and asks, "Where's the best place you've ever vacationed?"

"Rio," he tells her, without missing a beat, and she smiles.

"Tell me about it."

He does, in detail, every little bit, from the flight, to the food, to hotel, he smothers her in detail, and she asks question after question, and it works. She settles.

They order, and the food is delicious when it arrives. It's not the best shrimp she's ever had, but not the worst either, and the spices are good. They eat it over tales of her adolescence spent in competitive equestrianism – he wincingly admits he'd been to math camp, insisting it was all his parents' idea when she laughs into her pad thai.

"You'd never have given me the time of day back then, I bet," he tells her.

"Probably not," she admits, adding, "But trust me, you wouldn't have wanted me to. Dating teenage Regina would have meant a Spanish-Inquisition-style grilling from my parents. Much better to take me to dinner now, when they live far enough away that I can keep my private life private."

"They can't be that bad," he dismisses, nabbing a piece of basil shrimp off his own plate and popping it in his mouth after reasoning, "I'm sure your father would have spared me the rack."

"My father, sure," Regina smiles. "It's Mother you have to worry about."

He chuckles, and chews, and she scoops up a portion of noodles as his expression shifts into something more thoughtful.

She doesn't expect the shift in tone when he says knowingly, "She was hard on you."

Understatement of the year, Regina thinks as she rushes to chew her mouthful, but what she says after she swallows is simply, "Yes."

"Still?"

"Yes."

"She should be proud. You're amazing," he says, and Regina gets an odd rush of deja vu.

They've talked about this before, she thinks. It had been overly flattering, then, too, but less appropriate, considering it had been during work. During a lunch meeting, maybe? Just the two of them – it must have been. She can't remember specifics, but she remembers the discomfort of his compliments.

"You already got the date, Sidney," she dismisses, her freshly refilled ice cubes clinking a little as she turns the glass this way and that on the table. "And you got me smiling, and not thinking about… everything. You don't need to earn points with flattery."

"It's only flattery if it's not true," he says, fork poised again, his gaze compelling hers as he professes, "And I believe every word I say about you.

Funny how she'd forgotten the way his adoration of her used to make her squirm.

The recollection throws her a little, has her tucking her hair (and then catching herself and forcing her hand to drop and grasp her water glass instead). Nothing wrong with a little adoration, she tells herself. Robin adores her, too. Of course, he also thinks she's stubborn and bossy, and a neat-freak. And tells her so, now and again. Teases. Or did. He did do that, before. But he is not here, and he is not relevant, and she needs to put him out of her mind. Again.

Still, "I think you have a somewhat rosy view of me," she says to Sidney. "I'm not perfect."

"Maybe not," he concedes, "But you _are_ amazing. And I am so happy you finally said yes to this."

"Me, too."

She means it, then, in that moment, where she feels light, and flirtatious. It's not Robin, not like it was with Robin (she needs to stop thinking about Robin, that's not fair to Sidney, he's really trying – maybe too hard, but still, he's trying), but it's… not bad. It's not bad, this date hasn't been _bad_. Not nearly the disaster Mal had predicted it would be.

So when he asks if she wants to grab dessert somewhere else, Regina agrees. There's a little cafe not far away, he says, with pastries she absolutely must try. She already has a brick of noodles weighing down her belly (that might have been a bad choice, she should have gone with a curry instead, gone easy on the rice, less starch, fewer carbs… But she has a weakness for peanut sauce), so she orders something small and fruity, and a decaf coffee, black.

He's not wrong, the berry torte _is_ delicious, but she's only halfway through before she begins to feel that wobbly-stomached edge of anxiety again. And there's not even a good reason for it this time. She's enjoying herself – for the most part. They're suffering fewer awkward pauses, and she feels relaxed. Comfortable. Aside from the skin-crawling curdle of sensation along her scalp, the back of her neck. A sort of hot-cold flush that turns her stomach and makes the dessert go cloying and too-sweet on her tongue.

She swallows it down with a mouthful of coffee, and it passes, but she spends the next half hour picking at the torte instead of really eating it.

When Sidney has polished off his eclair and cappuccino, and she still has a third of a torte and half a cup of coffee, he frowns and says, "You don't really like it, do you?"

"I do," she insists, shaking her head. "I'm just… stuffed to the gills. I think I need to admit defeat."

He accepts her excuses with a smile and asks for the check, and still the tremulous unease lingers somewhere around her middle. She thinks of the long-expired bottle of Xanax stashed somewhere in the back of her underwear drawer, the one she hasn't touched in ages, and thinks that if this feeling persists (she's had it since yesterday, hasn't she – the untamable fits of nervous indigestion?) maybe she'll take one. The last thing she needs is for it to finally blossom into a full-blown anxiety attack.

The idea that it could be something else doesn't occur to her until they're halfway home, and every press of the break has her stomach somersaulting perilously. She's not one who usually gets carsick, but she rolls the window down just for a bit of breeze on her brow and takes in slow, deep breaths in and out. Closes her eyes, and lets the streetlamps illuminate her eyelids in regular flashes of burnt orange amidst the dim.

"You're awfully quiet over there," Sidney tells her, his hand reaching over and settling on her bare knee.

She tenses reflexively, and swallows hard, admitting, "I'm not feeling so well all of a sudden. Night driving on an overfull stomach isn't doing me any favors, I think."

His thumb rubs along her kneecap, and she really, really does not want to be touched right now, but she'd rather focus on quelling the intermittent waves of nausea than tactfully removing that clammy hand from her leg, so she ignores it.

"We'll be home soon," he assures, his voice gentle.

And they are, it's only a few minutes before he's double-parking (again), and rushing to help her out of the car. But she wants air, wants to not be in a vehicle anymore, so she's up and standing before he even makes it to her, something that makes what she thinks may be genuine irritation flicker across his face for a moment.

"You should let me do that for you," he chides. "Gentlemen help ladies from cars at the end of dates, you know."

" _Ladies_ wanted to stand and catch their breath tonight," she retorts, a little frosty as she presses a hand to her middle.

He softens sympathetically at that, says, "Fair enough," and reaches for her elbow.

Things begin to normalize as they make their way up the walk. It's better now, out of the car. She wants water – maybe some seltzer – wants to sip at something slowly and let the bubbles ease the nausea away. But she feels like the unpleasant sensation will ebb once she's able to properly digest for a while.

_Note to self: Go easy on the noodles._

When they reach the doorway, she thinks he might attempt to kiss her goodnight – expects him to, even though the date had been far from perfect. But he doesn't even try, just squeezes her arm lightly as they stand on her porch and says, "Go lie down for a while; maybe you'll feel better."

Regina nods, reaches for the door, but Sidney is still holding her arm. "I'll do that. Thank you, for tonight."

"Was I a suitable distraction from your troubles?" he asks, fingers skimming down her forearm, tangling with hers as they dangle limply.

Regina smiles. "You were. I appreciate it."

And oh, there's the moment. She sees it, the way he drops his gaze to her lips, the sudden shift in the air. Adrenaline socks her in the gut, makes it lurch and wobble again, and Regina presses her lips together firmly against the sensation.

Sidney brings their still-joined hands up to his lips instead, presses a kiss to her knuckles and watches her face over the top of them as he says, "Then I've done all I could have hoped. Thank you for a wonderful evening, Regina."

"You, too," she says, and then he's releasing her hand, and she's fishing out her keys.

He stays on the porch with her until she closes the door behind herself, and turns to find Mary Margaret waiting in the living room, face bright and curious and expectant.

"So?" she asks Regina. "How was it?"

Gossip is the last thing she wants to do right now, but she wants a distraction from the wishy-washy whims of her body, and there's something comforting in the familiarity of the babysitter.

So Regina sighs, and points her toward the kitchen. She'll talk for exactly ten minutes, and then she wants some peace and quiet.

**.::.**

She's warm. She feels warm. By the time she's tucking Henry into bed, she just feels… off. Feverish and clammy, and that rolling queasiness hasn't gone away.

She must not be hiding it very well, because he asks her about it. Frowns up at her from under his tucked covers and asks, "Mom, are you okay?"

And she thinks, perhaps, no, she's not. Her stomach dips and churns, and she thinks she might be in for a date with the toilet in the very near future, but she doesn't want him to worry about that. She can hold out until he's had time to drift off to sleep. Hopefully it'll pass. Maybe some peppermint tea will settle her stomach…

So she tells him, "I'm fine, sweetheart. Just feeling a little under the weather, that's all," and leans in to press a kiss to his brow. "Sleep well, my little prince."

He snuggles deeper into his pillow, still eying her half-skeptically, but he says, "Goodnight, mom," anyway, and at least attempts to close his eyes before she turns out the bedroom light.

She changes before heading downstairs. Swaps her dress for a thin camisole and shorts, wrapping her light cotton robe over top (she's warm, but also oddly… not). In the kitchen, she sets the kettle on to boil, draws down the rough-edged, crooked-handled mug Henry had made for her during an after-school pottery class last year, and fishes in the cupboards for the box of peppermint tea. It's nearly empty, only two bags left. She ought to replace it soon...

She draws out a bag, tears the paper with a slow exhale of breath (she feels worse by the minute), and drops it into the mug, and then she stands there. Waiting. Hands pressed to the counter's edge, lungs expanding and contracting in measured breaths, going over the possible culprits of the traitorous revolt of her insides from tonight's dinner.

Probably the shrimp. Seafood is always the first suspect, right?

She says a litany of silent prayers that this stays where it is. The nausea and a creeping malaise of "I ate something that disagreed with me," but not the full-blown horror that is food poisoning.

The kettle whistles sooner than she expects, half-startles her, and she reaches for it automatically, pouring the steaming water over her teabag and then flipping off the burner. She cradles the warm mug in her hands as she climbs the stairs again, her belly letting loose an ominous burble when she's halfway up, but she makes it to bed without incident. Sheds her robe and slides beneath the covers, sitting up with a book in her lap, a pretense of reading while all she really does is take slow sips of peppermint tea.

It's soothing. Hot, and she is hot, but the mint is… good. Nice. It settles her stomach.

She tells herself it settles her stomach.

She tells herself that for twenty minutes straight, until she's left the half-empty mug on the nightstand and stumbled her way into the bathroom, hitting her knees on the rug in front of the toilet just in time to hurl up a generous portion of shrimp pad thai. It tasted a hell of a lot better going down, that's for sure.

She retches, and gags, and vomits some more, cursing the haircut she got so recently when she has to scoop her hair back in her fingers to keep it from slipping down into the splash zone. She has a second to breathe, but every breath smells like sick, and that's certainly not helping with the urge to – throw up again, forcefully, oh God, she's going to murder Sidney Glass and Leo Blanchard, not necessarily in that order, for putting her in the path of subpar seafood. It's the thought she clings to as she coughs and gasps, and spits, saliva thick and slimy in her mouth, her eyes watering.

God, this is terrible.

She needs to flush this toilet or hold her breath, or die right here, whatever's clever.

Her stomach feels like it might hold for a moment, so she spits again and leans back far enough to pull the handle on the toilet and send the first of what she hopes are reasonably few waves of this down the plumbing.

Her mouth tastes sour, and she's snotty, face covered in tear tracks. She yanks a few squares of toilet paper off the roll and blows her nose, something in the action making her gag perilously, sending her veeing toward the toilet bowl again, but it settles.

She coughs lightly, rubs the back of her hand across her damp cheeks and breathes slowly again.

She needs to put her hair up. It's too short to manage much more than a stubby ponytail, but that's enough for now. Enough to keep it out of the way. And she has a few bobby pins in here to tuck way the shorter strands.

If she can make it to her feet.

She's sweaty, now, and hot. Can feel the dampness on the back of her neck, her hairline, the backs of her knees.

She still feels queasy, except now the gurgling, tumbling sensation in her belly is joined by shaky limbs and an acidic soreness to the back of her throat. She should brush her teeth.

She shifts, makes to stand, a pitching roll through her middle making her second-guess the idea of standing just yet. Slowly, she just needs to do it slowly. Steadily. No sudden movements. Don't startle the food poisoning.

Her mouth still feels slick and slimy, like she has too much saliva. She wants to spit, wants to drink something. Wants to rewind back thirty-six hours and request Italian food instead (she thinks briefly of chicken parm and nearly sinks back to the floor mid-rise at a wave of nausea – no food, no food ever again). She makes it to her feet, slowly but surely, takes the two steps to the sink on shaky knees, and then spits (thank God) before wrenching the tap on and scooping up a palmful of cool water (she remembers a moment too late that said palm had gripped the toilet seat briefly not too long ago, God, that's disgusting, and she grapples for the Listerine, swishes it for a five-count because she cannot stand another second more, coughing as she spits it into the sink).

When she finally looks up at herself in the mirror, she groans. She hadn't taken her makeup off yet, a smudgy smear of mascara and shadow that is entirely unattractive now decorating her general eye area. No wonder they're still stinging lightly.

Her stomach gives another pinching tumble and she thinks _Priorities_ and reaches shaky fingers for a hair tie, drawing dark locks up as best she can, deciding the strands that slip out are too short to puke on anyway, and letting them fall.

Less than a minute later she's bent over the bowl again, her violent gagging sounding overly loud as her head spins, her eyes stinging as she squeezes them shut against the melting mascara.

Oh God, she hates being sick. Hates it.

"Mom?"

She freezes. Then dry heaves. Then freezes again. Shit. Henry. He's supposed to be in bed, asleep.

"Sweetheart, go back to bed," she urges, her voice thick and scratchy.

"Are you okay?"

She spits, nods, considers turning to attempt a reassuring smile, but there was nothing reassuring about her face five minutes ago, and it can't be any better now. Instead she clears her throat, and rasps, "I'm fine, sweetheart, go back to bed," getting the words out just in time to prove them spectacularly wrong with another wet, sloshing heave.

She can practically hear his grimace as he insists, "No, you're not, you're gross."

Yes. Isn't she just.

"Henry." Her voice sounds clogged. She's snotty again. God, gross really is the right word for this. "I'm fine. I'm just sick. Please go back to bed."

"Are you sure?"

He doesn't sound like he is, not at all.

She "Mmhmm"s and tries very hard not to give in to the next clenching wave until she hears him padding away from the bathroom, his bare footfalls soft on the hardwoods. Of course trying to hold back the gagging just means that she half chokes her way through it when it finally bests her.

Regina's last thought for the next few minutes is that it's going to be a very long night.

**.::.**

He's not expecting to hear from her, and he shouldn't be hoping to, considering he knows she was out with another man tonight, but when Robin's phone rings well past bedtime and it's _Regina Mills_ on the caller ID, he can't say he's disappointed.

Confused, perhaps, but not disappointed.

His confusion only deepens when his, "Regina?" is answered not by the honeyed smoothness of her voice, but by the worried pitch of her son's.

"Something's wrong with my mom," Henry tells him, and Robin's hand clenches anxiously on the frame of his mobile.

"What do you mean?"

"She's sick. She's throwing up. A lot."

Lovely, Robin thinks with a sympathetic grimace.

And then Henry adds, "I think she needs you," and Robin scowls.

"Henry, we've talked about this," he reminds, trying to be firm but not unkind. "You cannot keep trying to push us together."

"I'm not. She's throwing up, a lot, really a lot and it's gross."

"If your mum's sick, I don't think she'll much appreciate company," he tells Henry gently, although he does suspect that perhaps this isn't some terribly misguided attempt to draw them together, but an expression of actual concern for the woman who always takes care of him when _he_ is ill and ailing.

"Robin, she needs help. She's like The Exorcist."

Robin can't help a soft snort of a laugh, questioning, "Have you even seen The Exorcist?" He can't imagine Regina would consider it proper viewing material for her primary schooler.

"No, but I know there's a lot of puking," Henry admits. There is that.

"Can you please just come make sure she's okay? She says she's fine, but she always says that to me. What if she needs a doctor or something?"

The boy is scared. Really, genuinely worried for her, Robin can hear it in his voice, and it's that as much as the image of Regina vomiting uncontrollably that has him letting out a breath and agreeing, "I'll come make sure she's alright, but I'm not staying."

Henry's exhale over the line is all relief, and he rushes an, "Okay, I'll meet you at the door," before hanging up on Robin.

Well, this is just… odd. And he's not sure it won't be entirely unwelcome–- in fact, is fairly certain that to Regina this little bit of home invasion nursing _will_ be entirely unwelcome — but no one should have to Exorcist alone, he supposes.

So he checks on Roland, tells John he's popping next door for a minute (gets a questioning raise of the brows for that one, but doesn't bother to explain further) and shoves his feet into his trainers before heading out into the muggy night air.

Henry has the door open before Robin's even on the top step, looking as stern as one can manage in Captain America pajamas, and asking, "What took you so long?"

"I was only a moment," Robin excuses, keeping his voice hushed.

"She stopped for a minute, I think."

Robin's not sure if that's better or worse for his presence, but he heads for the stairs nonetheless, urging Henry, "Stay down here, alright? Pour your mum a nice big glass of cool water, and I'll let you know when to bring it up. That way she won't be in Mom Mode, trying to spare your feelings, hmm?"

Henry seems to find this a sound plan, because he nods and heads for the kitchen as Robin begins to climb the stairs.

He hears her retch from two paces away, the bathroom door half-open, and when he peers around it his heart clenches. She's in a grey top and shorts (the leg curled underneath her is deliciously bare, and he scolds himself for noticing when she's clearly unwell, but vomiting or not, it's a great leg), the top edge of her tank top darkened with sweat, her body bent around the toilet bowl, one arm bent over the back of her head as she pants lightly, ribs filling and emptying quickly.

Her fingers curl around the nub of her ponytail, and he itches to swipe her hair back from her face, to run a soothing palm over her back.

But it's not his place. Being here isn't even his place. And so he leans against the doorjamb and asks, "You alright, babe?"

She goes stone-still, not even those clenching fingers move, and then she groans a thick and pitiful, "Oh God, what are you doing here?"

She gags slightly, then coughs and spits, and Robin winces, closes his fists and pretends to put down roots into the floor a respectable distance away from her.

"Henry called. He was worried about you."

"He's grounded," she growls; Robin can't help but chuckle.

His "He just wants to know you're not dying," is drowned out by a sudden heave and slosh into the toilet bowl. Her torso bows in tightly, fingers clenching in her hair, her toes curling. God, she really is in a state.

"Not dying," she croaks when she's able. "Bad shrimp."

A petty little part of him, one he wishes he could haul off and smack for the insolence of it, takes a tiny amount of pleasure in the idea that she'll forever associate dinner with Sidney Glass with her face in a toilet bowl. But that's wrong, and just as cruel to her as it is to the other guy, so he focuses on being a decent human being, and asks, "Can I get you anything? Water?" She has to have tossed up enough to worry about mild dehydration at this point. "Pedialyte?" She lets out a dry heave and a muttered _Oh God_ … at that suggestion, so he switches to, "Gatorade?" She needs some liquids, a bit of sugar, some electrolytes. A good bottle of Gatorade had gotten him through plenty of rough nights in his younger years.

"That," she grunts, and then she's moaning, a hint of panic in her voice as she turns and shoves the trash bin in his general direction, lifting her face for the first time as she rushes, "Can you dump this and bring it back to me very quickly please?"

She looks a fright, pale and waxy, cheeks blotchy red and streaked with mascara. But it's the eyes, wide and bloodshot and radiating anxiety that have him reaching down without question and jogging from the room. There's only one reason to need an empty trash can when there's a toilet readily available, and he's not willing to subject her to the mortification of getting _that_ degree of sick with an audience. Providing an unexpected audience to the copious vomiting was bad enough.

"Should I bring her the water?" Henry asks eager, a generous cup of water full to the brim between his hands on the kitchen tabletop as Robin makes haste for the larger trash bin under the sink.

"Not quite yet," Robin urges. "She'll be alright, but she needs a bit of privacy."

He dumps the bathroom bin, then jogs back for the stairs, only to find his minute away has been a surprisingly productive one for Regina. She's managed to shift herself from the floor to the edge of the tub, the toilet now clear of sick and running from a recent flush, and she's wiped away some of the makeup from her cheeks, leaving her eyes raccoon-ish and smudged but still better than before. She's still hunched, arms banded around her middle, fingernails pressing tight into her elbows as she rocks slightly on her perch.

They're on a time crunch here, so he asks, "What flavor Gatorade?" as he sets the bin down near her feet.

"Red," she answers quickly, and then, "No– …yes. Red."

He nods, says, "Okay," doesn't even give her time to finish her _Can you take Henry for–_ before he's agreeing, "Yeah, of course."

Her voice is trembling, her legs bouncing restlessly, as she rushes, "Thank you, get out."

Robin turns for the door, and then whirls back, anxiety pinching in his own belly, making him reckless as he leans over and presses a kiss to her brow, murmuring, "I'll leave water before I go, and set the Gatorade outside the door, alright?"

Her "Mmhmm!" chases him to the door, and he flips on the overhead fan as much for an added layer of privacy as anything else before he shuts the bathroom door behind him and heads for the kitchen again.

He can still feel her skin against his lips, warm and sweaty. Stupid thing to do; he had no right. But she'd been so miserable, and for all he can do, he's still so bloody helpless.

But he shakes it off long enough to offer Henry a smile, along with reassurances that his mother doesn't need a doctor, but instead needs for him to throw a change of clothes in a rucksack for the night and be one less thing she needs to worry over while she's busy being sick. He sends the boy up for just that, cup of water in hands, with strict orders to leave it outside the bathroom door but not disturb his mother and return with whatever he might need for the night.

A cursory check of the fridge and pantry reveals not a Gatorade in sight (not a terrible surprise, that), so he sees Henry into the house, asks John to make up the couch for him

and disappears back into the night, convenience-store bound.

**.::.**

This is not the worst night of her life, not by a long shot. It's not even the worst night of her summer; that was probably the night she discovered the man she was so enamoured with had lied, had kept secrets, was a non-option for her, romantically. But tonight, this night, with the puking until her head throbs and her throat is raw, with the fifteen minutes spent with her face in a trash can because her trusty toilet was otherwise occupied, with said man well aware of every disgusting bodily revolt she was being subjected to… it comes pretty close.

She's lying on the bathroom floor when he returns. Has just stretched herself out there after a few sips from the giant Orioles souvenir cup of water he'd left outside the door for her (wishful thinking, her downing that whole thing on such a shaky stomach), the tile cool on her cheek, the bath mat soft under her shoulder, her skin cooling as sweat begins to evaporate and leave her both feverish and chilled.

It's quiet, and calm, and she's contemplating the need to mop this floor, there's grime along the edge of the baseboards, when she hears the creak of shoes on the hardwoods (where is he going? God, that had better be him – if this is a home invasion, she'll die right here and puke on the intruder for good measure) and then a soft knock on the door.

"Regina?"

Not a home invasion, then. Just him.

She manages a gravelly, "Yeah," and the door eases open.

She slides one bleary eye up in his direction just in time to catch a smile forming on his lips. He's so pretty, she thinks. Such a stupid, caring, beautiful man.

She cannot believe he saw her vomit.

When she feels less like she's been run over, she'll be mortified about that all over again.

But for now, she just watches as he crouches beside her, sets two bottles of red Gatorade that make her mouth water (the bottles are frosty, condensation beading on the outside. They're probably cold, she bets they're cold. She's thirsty…) within easy reach. Then he presses the backs of his fingers to her brow and asks, "How's the patient?"

She grunts. That's enough of a response, she thinks.

Her phone settles an inch from where her hand rests on the bathroom rug, and he says, "I thought you might want that handy. In case you need anything else. Just text, alright?"

Regina nods, and swallows, murmurs, "Thanks," and then, "Could you, um…" He tilts his head, waits. "Could you get my robe? It's on the chair by the bed. I'm getting cold."

He brushes hair back from her brow and murmurs a quiet, "I'll be right back with it," before rising and leaving her there. Her gaze swings to the Gatorade. She should drink some. She needs to drink something. Her lips are dry.

It takes effort, convincing herself to move, and then effort to actually do the moving, so she's only halfway up by the time he returns, with a decorative pillow from the bed and the requested robe. He drops both and squats to brace a hand at her shoulder, helps her ease up to sitting ― doesn't push, just supports - and then scoops the robe back up and swings it around her shoulders once she's steady.

"I didn't figure you'd want your regular pillow on the floor of the loo," he tells her, gesturing to the throw pillow as she reaches for the Gatorade. The confession has her glancing at him, has an ache in her middle that has nothing to do with overworked abdominal muscles. Of course he'd think of that.

She murmurs a _Thanks_ , and wraps her grip around the plastic cap. She feels a little jelly-limbed, expects to have to summon up some muscle to twist her drink open, but it goes easily. He's already cracked it for her.

Her lips curve weakly as she lifts the drink, tells him again, "Thank you," and then sips. Sugar blooms across her tongue, a welcome change from bile, and blissfully cold. It's a tiny sip, a fraction of a mouthful, but she takes another, and another. Gingerly.

"Someone has to take care of Mum when she's sick, yeah?" he reasons, and she nods, dry lips smiling softly.

"Usually not," she says, "But it's a welcome, if embarrassing, change."

He's smiling then, too, shaking his head and assuring, "Nothing to be embarrassed over. And I'm sorry – about kissing you earlier, I shouldn't have done that."

She takes another slow sip, swallows, and then says, "It's alright. I want to tell you not to do it again, but I feel like crap on a cracker, and it felt nice. So. Maybe I'll tell you that tomorrow, okay?"

His smile widens into a grin, and he nods, says, "I'll await a proper scolding when you're back at your full sass. Do you want to move to the bed?"

"No." She shakes her head slowly, swallowing thickly and stopping when the movement makes her stomach lurch a little again. Slow breath in, and out, and it settles. "I think I'm gonna stay here a while longer. Until I know it's passed."

"I'll leave you to it, then." He reaches out, brushes at a stubborn lock of hair again, and urges, "Don't sleep here, though. Text if you need me to come drag your arse to the bed."

"Ha ha," she taunts back. "I think I'll manage."

Another warm smile, and he's leaning in, pressing a kiss to her brow again, just like before. Except this one has less haste, and it's not accompanied by a hot, twisting, roiling in her intestines, so it's even more soothing than the first. Regina's eyes drop shut to savor it, forgetting in her misery that she's not supposed to be indulging in him anymore.

He draws back and tells her, "You can scold me twice now, I guess," before giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze and standing with a creak in his knees that makes her feel much better about the way her left one pops when she crouches too long.

"Check in, alright?" It's not really a question, more an order, and she nods. And then he's gone.

Regina sips at her Gatorade for a while longer, then lowers herself back to the floor, head on the pillow this time, and prays there's no more vomit in her immediate future.

Her prayers fall on deaf ears.


	23. Chapter 23

Morning does not come easily for Robin Locksley.

Getting a child down to sleep for the night can be a challenge on the best of nights, and a night spent in a strange home, on a strange sofa, when one's mother is extremely ill two doors down is hardly that. As a result, Robin had spent half the night up with an anxious ten-year-old, watching reruns of Mythbusters on cable and trying to convince him that it was perfectly alright to have left Regina to herself in such a state.

"Has she texted you?" is a question he would gladly never hear again, after being asked roughly every thirty minutes until half three, when Henry finally succumbed to exhaustion, his face smushed into a sofa cushion.

Roland had gone down easily long before Robin's trip to the sickbay next door, both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, he hadn't had _two_ overtired and stressed children to deal with until all hours of the night. On the other, Roland's full night's rest has him up bright and early as usual, leaving his father groggy-eyed and fuzzy-headed as he fixes the boy something to eat and turns on cartoons low enough to keep from waking Henry.

He checks his phone, just in case, both hoping to have heard from Regina and wishing for the lack of messages to indicate that perhaps she's still resting peacefully. Nothing. He tells himself that's good, that it's good she's not sent him anything, and busies himself adding milk to his and Roland's bowls of Kix. They'd traded messages now and then the night before - brief exchanges that essentially amounted to reassurances that she was still awake and not literally dying, even if perhaps it felt so. His last message from her had been a simple _Going to sleep_ somewhere around the time Henry dropped off, and he hopes that her body has finally allowed her an extended reprieve.

Another half hour ticks by before John makes his way downstairs with a gargantuan yawn and a beeline for the coffee pot, and with him up and about, Robin leaves Roland to the care of Caillou while he takes a quick shower before heading next door. Maybe he shouldn't, but he can't put away the image of her, hunched and sweating and miserable, can't unfeel the dampness of her brow against his lips, and he wants to see to it that she's alright. And also find out if she'd like him to keep Henry a bit longer. So it's justified, this early-morning drop-by. That's what he tells himself as he climbs her front step, spare key in hand.

Her house is silent as the grave when he enters, punching in the code on the security system and listening for any sign of her. He heads upstairs, his footfalls sounding overly loud, that creaky step whining beneath his trainers. The bathroom door is open, light on, fan still going, but she's not there. He finds her in the bedroom, face-down on the mattress, sprawled and silent and half-covered, her hair free and riotous around what little he can see of her sleeping face.

The bathroom rubbish bin is on the floor in front of her nightstand, and as he steps closer, he notices it's not empty. It's nothing approaching the fierce volleys she'd been heaving up the night before, but the thin layer of sick at the bottom has him grimacing nonetheless, the dull red color causing a sharp pang of concern before he remembers he'd left her with an empty stomach and copious amounts of Gatorade.

Clearly the sport drink hadn't stayed down as well as one would hope. He's loath to disturb her, out cold as she is, but he also feels the need to assure himself that she's no worse than he'd left her the night before. That her bit of fruit punch vomit is as benign as it appears. It must be that - the drink - blood would be darker, thicker.

But still, he settles himself gingerly on the edge of her bed and reaches a hand over to rest on Regina's back, rubbing it lightly to ease her into waking. Her breaths are slow and even at first, and then her lungs expand further in a deep inhale before collapsing heavily. He cannot see her face, half-shielded as it is by the fall of her hair, so he lifts a hand to tuck it back. He keeps his movement languid and soothing, careful not to jostle her as he draws his fingertips through the warm strands, coasting back along her scalp, behind her ear.

Her face twitches slightly, then scrunches, her lashes fluttering, but not quite opening, and it hits him once again how beautiful she is, even ill and miserable.

She takes another deep breath, and makes a soft sound, a high-pitched cross between grunt and whine as she comes slowly back into the land of the living.

**.::.**

There's someone in her room, on her bed, and she is fairly certain it is Robin, can smell the familiar woodsy scent of him, strong as though he's freshly showered. She _hopes_ it's Robin, because she is utterly unwilling to move. She found a comfortable position sometime between dead-of-night and early-morning, and dropped off into some much-needed sleep. And now, for the first time in she has no idea how many hours, she finally doesn't feel like she's about to hurl up her insides. A state she's not entirely sure she can maintain if she moves.

She is comfortable - a luxury she treasures after so many hours of _dis_ comfort - and the idea that she might have to shift for any reason whatsoever is simply too much to bear. The caring touches feel so good, so soothing, tracing through her hair, and then settling onto her back again and rubbing there in a way that reminds her very much of the way she handles Henry when he is ill. It reminds her of her father, of being sick as a child, and she doesn't want it to end.

She should. It's Robin, she's ninety-eight percent sure of that, and they're not supposed to be doing this. Touching. Being intimate.

She says his name – tries to anyway – but it comes out more like "Rmnn?"

"It's me, babe. How are you feeling?"

She clears her throat but doesn't move a muscle. Not her arms, her legs, nothing below her shoulders. She licks her lips (they're dry, her whole mouth is dry, her throat aches with thirst), and swallows, coughing gently (his hand stills, presses gently between her shoulder blades).

"'M'lright," she manages, her voice sounding rough and weak. "'S'long as I n'ver move again."

"I should let you get back to sleep," he murmurs, his voice smooth and soft. She wants to wrap herself up in it and sink back down into unconsciousness. "Just wanted to make sure you were still with us."

"I am." She peels her eyes open to prove it, but even the dim light of her curtained windows, the sun seems harsh and unkind, so she squeezes them shut. His fingers are in her hair again, easing it back, tickling slightly at the edge of her ear as he passes.

"Rest, love. Do you need anything while I'm here?"

Something to drink. She's thirsty, so thirsty. But the thought of the last thing she'd put in her stomach has her brow wrinkling. "Not Gatorade. If I never see red Gatorade again it'll be too soon."

He chuckles, low and warm, and draws his palm over the length of her spine. She could just about purr at the warmth of it. When he tells her, "I see it didn't stay with you long," she groans, mortification flaring as she remembers that after leaning her head over the edge of the bed and throwing up the sour sweetness of half a bottle of the stuff, she'd simply collapsed where she is now and told herself she'd take care of it in the morning.

But morning is here, and so is Robin, and her puke bucket is still festering beside the bed. Bad enough that he witnessed the sight of her last night, but at least she'd managed to keep him from seeing the actual byproduct of her ill-advised dinner. Not so anymore.

"Let me take care of this, and then I'll get out of your hair," he tells her and oh no, oh God, no, the only thing worse than him seeing her vomit is the prospect of him _cleaning_ her vomit. That's just… she can't have that.

She tenses, tries to convince her muscles into action, but he's still right there, hand on her back, and he asks far too kindly, "Do you need the bucket again?"

"No, I need to clean it," she manages, and his hand presses more firmly, keeping her in place. Not that she'd made it past an initial clench of sore, tired muscles, but still.

"Nonsense," he dismisses. "You're alright as long as you never move again, yeah? Can't have you losing the sweet spot. You rest; I've got it."

"You're not cleaning my vomit, Robin."

"Why not?"

"Because it's…disgusting. You shouldn't have to do that."

"I don't have to, I'm offering to. And need I remind you, I spent much of my early adulthood gigging with a band and then proceeded to raise a toddler; I've seen my fair share of vomit, I assure you. This is nothing. You rest; let me take care of you for a moment or two."

She shouldn't, doesn't want to, the idea of him cleaning up after her is humiliating, but at the same time… her body begs for a reprieve, begs for the comfort of soft blankets and absolutely no movement whatsoever.

So she concedes with a whimpering, "I'm sorry."

But Robin just shushes her and strokes her hair again, and then the bed shifts with the lack of him, his footfalls landing quietly across her bedroom floor.

She hears the bathtub faucet running a minute later, and scowls. Oh, please say he is not. He is not dumping that out in the _tub_. The tub where she cleans herself. They'd have been better off letting it sit.

He's back a moment later, and while she still can't quite bring herself to keep her eyes open, she does manage to scold, "Please tell me you didn't clean my vomit out into the bath."

He lets out another short chuckle, assuring, "I just ran a bit of water in the bin, love. It'd gotten rather… dry."

"Oh," she frowns. Well, that's something at least.

"I'll dump it in the toilet before I go. I know you said no Gatorade, but would you like a bit of water, maybe?"

His hand is on her back again, and she's so tired, and feels miserable, and he is there, and so comforting, so gentle and so… so stupid and perfect (not really, not in the slightest, but maybe perfect for _her_ ), and just what she needs and hasn't had since Graham, and she cannot have him.

She nods, murmurs, "Cold, please," feels the hot prickle of tears along the dark of her eyeballs and then the bed shifts again and he's gone.

Regina bites the inside of her lip, her throat suddenly tight and aching, something in the middle of her chest throbbing painfully. She has never hated her mother's vindictiveness as much as she does in this moment. Not even all those times it had been aimed against her. Those were bruising and unfair, but this is miserable, because he cares so much for her. He knows she is a mess, and he cares for her anyway. He wants her anyway. It screams in the air between them, the wanting, always, they both just _want_ and they can't _have_ and she is scared for him and angry for herself and she wishes she could just go back somehow and undo what he did. Make it another house, with another wealthy couple, a dark secret he carries and never tells her, or a late night confession that makes her feel conflicted for a day or two over what kind of man he is but doesn't leave her alone and miserable and puking her guts up after a date where she made half a fool of herself with a _coworker_.

Regina feels the warm drip of a tear across the bridge of her nose, can feel the damp itchiness of the pillowcase where another has leaked out beside her eye. She wants to sob, wants to cry over this stupid situation _again_ , and it makes her feel weak ( _Love is weakness, Regina_ and isn't that the truth). And she _is_ weak – her body is spent, exhausted, insubstantial and begging for more sleep. More rest. More time to recover. She cannot fight the perilous whims of her broken heart when her body is this tired.

He needs to go. So she can be pathetic in peace. (She doesn't want him to go. She wants him to rub her back for the next six hours.)

She nearly misses his quiet footfalls in the hall, but manages to clench her jaw together and bite down at the tears just in time, praying he doesn't notice the few that had escaped. If he does, he doesn't say anything, simply sinks onto the edge of the bed again, and just when she's starting to psyche herself up for finally moving, she feels the cool plastic of a water bottle against her fingers.

"Thought this might be easier," he murmurs, adding, "You can stay just as you are."

She opens her eyes and stares, dumbfounded, the sight blurring heavily as tears well in her eyes again. He filled her Camelbak. The water bottle with the bite spout to keep it from spilling, the one she could bring to her lips right now and suck on until it was half gone without ever having to lift a muscle. Of all the things he could have brought her a drink in, he chose _that_ and her throat _hurts_ with clenching thickness, a silent whine escaping before her breath hitches, chin quivering.

Oh God, first the vomiting and now the crying, what indignities does she have left to show off in front of him?

But it's just… he's just…. and she just wants… and they can't…

She blinks, clearing her eyes, but a fresh bloom of tears rises immediately, and then he's all sympathetic tones, and that soothing open palm, whispering, "It's alright, babe, I know you don't feel well. It'll all be better soon, just a bit of rest, alright? Shhh, just breathe a bit, have a sip of water, you'll feel better…"

He doesn't know why she's crying, can't, she's almost certain he wouldn't think her pathetic enough to be weeping over a relationship that never was, and in front of him of all people. He just thinks she's sick, and exhausted, and miserable. He must. Please God, let that be what he thinks is wrong with her right now instead of… this.

She does as he suggests (as her body is screaming for) and shifts the spout of the water bottle to parched lips, biting down to open the flow and sucking in a mouthful. The water is cold, just like she'd asked, ice cubes knocking against the plastic slightly. It's heaven. Nirvana in a bottle; she is so, so thirsty.

She sucks down a quarter of it, slowly, sniffling periodically as her tears begin to ebb.

"I thought I might take Henry for the day, if you don't mind," he suggests after a few minutes, hand still circling smoothly. "I promised Roland the zoo; it'd be no trouble to take Henry with. You could get some more sleep, relax all day. Recuperate without having to worry about seeing to anyone else."

Her fingers tighten on the bottle for a moment but she manages to keep a fresh surge of tears at bay. She wishes that he lived somewhere else, somewhere farther away, somewhere that wouldn't be constantly rubbing salt into the wound at the unexpected presence of him. With his kindness and his caring.

She releases the spout, water bubbling and gurgling as it settles in the bottle, then rasps, "That'd be good. Thank you. Does he need clothes?"

"I had him grab some last night," Robin assures. "Just in case. He's been very worried about his mum. I'm a bit scared to admit what time he finally settled down and slept."

She frowns, concern for her son spooling in her middle. "He's never seen me sick before. Not like that anyway."

"Well, I assured him, numerous times, that you weren't likely to expire from a plate of bad shrimp."

She _ugh_ s thickly at just the mention of it, pressing her face into the covers and swallowing back the memories of the retching, and the taste, and the… everything else.

Robin's hand is still moving, steady, soothing. He could rub her back all day... She wants to tell him screw the zoo, let the kids fend for themselves, she needs his spine-stroking services until his arm falls off from exhaustion.

She feels weighted. Like something heavy and putty-like, sinking slowly into the bedsheets.

"When you're better, you'll have to tell me where you went, so I can be sure never to eat there."

He says it with a teasing lightness that has one corner of her mouth curling up in a smile.

"Lotus of Siam," she murmurs, wondering how it is she can feel her eyelids growing heavy when they're already shut. "'m never eating there 'gain."

His chuckle is warm and thick, spreads through her like molasses, makes her feel even more sluggish, even more disconnected. She hears him tell her to text him if she needs anything brought in, and then there's nothing but that comforting, eternal circle of his hand over thin cotton to lull her back into the relief of sleep.

**.::.**

Henry is awake when Robin returns home, asking immediately, "Is my mom okay?"

"She is," Robin assures with a smile, settling a hand on the boy's shoulder and telling him, "She's gone back to sleep for a bit, but I talked with her and we agreed you ought to come with me and Roland to the zoo today."

Roland's whoop of excitement is countered by Henry's disapproving scowl. "But what if she needs me," the boy says. Robin's fighting the same feeling himself - wanting to stay close just in case he's needed, but she'd been on the mend this morning. Beat, but not dire. And she's not a woman who needs a caretaker, least of all him.

"I think she'll probably rest most of the day," Robin says, "She was up late. Best we leave her to that, yeah?"

"But there's no one to help her."

"I think the best help we can give your mum right now is to stay out of her hair, and give her a day off from having to take care of someone else."

"I guess…" Henry says, but he doesn't sound convinced. He turns to John, who's still nursing his coffee on the sofa, and asks, "If she needs anything, will you be here?"

He won't be - not all day. Robin knows that. And he can see the wheels turning in John's head as he straightens a little, looking between Robin and Henry before clearing his throat slightly and lying through his teeth. "Of course. You guys go have fun."

Thankfully, Henry buys into the deception, deciding that Regina is covered in any sort of emergent situation and that the prospect of a day filled with monkeys and giraffes is too much to resist. He does insist on running home first, though, claiming the shoes he'd brought last night were no good for walking around all day. They look just fine to Robin, so he's fairly certain Henry just wants to see Regina's rumored slow return to health for himself, but he can't begrudge the boy that, so he sends him on his way with strict orders not to wake his mother if she's sleeping.

He's back in under five minutes, fresh trainers and higher spirits, and Robin pats himself on the back for putting both her room and the bath to rights before leaving earlier, and setting the dishwasher to run, (he'd done it for Regina, so that she'd wake comfortable and not feel the need to fuss with anything while she was feeling poorly, but it seems the extreme normalcy of his neat-as-a-pin home has reassured Henry that all is not as dire as he'd feared).

"Daddy, we're gonna see the monkeys," Roland says excitedly, as Robin clips him into his carseat, Henry climbing in the other side of the back seat and buckling himself.

"That we are, my boy," he confirms, giving his son a calculated tickle to the shoulder that has him squirming and giggling before he adds, "We'll have to be careful, or I might mistake you for one and leave you behind."

"Noooo, Daddy!" his son cackles, pushing at his hands and grinning (he looks so much like Marian sometimes, and then others he's all dimples and Robin's chin, and he feels that swell of pride that this child is his, that whatever else he's done, whatever mistakes he's made, at least he got this right).

"No?" Robin questions. "You're not a monkey, then?"

"No," Roland giggles, and Robin grins back, ruffles those dark curls that are definitely all his mother and apologizes _My mistake_ , before glancing over to find Henry all buckled in and watching them like they're both a little weird and a little amusing.

"Are we ready to go?" Robin asks, and the older boy nods, and Yeps as Roland yells out Yesss!

And then they're on their way.

**.::.**

Regina wakes disoriented, her body swimming up to the surface of awareness, dragged there by something acute, something uncomfortable. She's still mostly on her stomach, something hard and smooth half-wedged beneath her shoulder, sticking to her as she shifts slightly, and oh. _Oh._ There's the discomfort.

She has to pee. Badly. Very badly.

She blinks her eyes open (the light is brighter now, but easier on the eyes nonetheless), and looks down to find the smooth something is her water bottle, the plastic warmed by her skin and the blankets she's now fully tucked under (when had that happened - she thinks they'd been twisted around her hips earlier?). She rolls gingerly to the side, testing the limits of her stomach, of her bladder. The plastic of the bottle peels away slowly at the movement, her skin tacky with dried sweat. Ugh. She needs a shower in addition to the toilet.

She makes it to sitting upright without the resurgence of nausea, but is too wary to thank her lucky stars for an end to the misery just yet. Knowing her luck, that'd be enough to have her stomach discovering a sudden aversion to water.

Her bladder feels like a boulder, aching with the pressure of fullness and the general protest of a body sore from sickness, and it's not helped at all by the gravity of standing. The room spins for half a second before righting itself, and her knees are jello-y, her legs feeling unsteady as she takes quick-but-careful steps to the bathroom.

She really, really has to pee.

She sinks down onto the toilet with a sigh of relief that immediately has her grimacing at the state of her breath (the shower might be a bit more than she wants to attempt while she still feels so off, but brushing her teeth is _definitely_ happening before she leaves this room), and pees for longer than she thinks should be possible for a person who threw up all the liquid in her body the night before and then sucked down less than half a bottle of water to rehydrate.

The trash can is back in its place, she notices somewhat blearily. There's a bit of water collected along the inside rim, but it's otherwise clean as a whistle, and she shrinks with embarrassment that Robin had actually cleaned up after her. She is mortified, but also so, so grateful that he'd done everything he had - taking care of Henry, taking care of _her_. She should do something for him. Something nice. Something…. something she'll think of when her head is no longer aching dully.

Regina makes quick work of hand-washing and tooth-brushing, the minty froth of her toothpaste tasting comfortingly sweet and refreshing after the swamp her mouth had been. And then she goes back to bed, because everything else just seems like work.

She curls up on her side this time, hugged up around the plush mass of her pillow, cotton soft against her cheek and smelling of shampoo and moisturizer and still a faint hint of detergent. Sleep is calling her again, but she wants to text Robin, wants to check on Henry, so she reaches for the phone plugged in neatly on her bedside table. Her last recollection of it was somewhere within reach on the mattress and nearly dead when she'd told Robin she was crashing the night before, and she knows without a doubt she is not responsible for the handful of ibuprofen tablets and the half-empty bottle of Pepto sitting beside it.

She thinks again of her covers, pulled up all the way to her shoulders and turning her bed into a cozy cocoon before she'd been so rudely awakened, and smiles.

He's a good friend, she tells herself. Someday, when the ache in her chest is less, they'll be good friends. She hopes.

Her lock screen (Henry hanging upside down on the monkey bars in the park, giving her two thumbs up and grinning like a fiend) is covered in notifications.

Three from Sidney, who she'd texted with briefly in the midst of her misery the night before, answering his _I think something may have been off with dinner, I'm not feeling very well either_ with _Definitely off. Definitely sick_. He'd apologized, and asked if it was terrible, and she hadn't bothered to answer. Or she'd been throwing up again, she can't quite remember. But clearly he'd caught up with her, sending her _Yes. Definitely sick. I'm so sorry._ at one AM, and _This is the last time I use Leo's restaurant recommendations._ at quarter past two. So she wasn't the only one up all night, then.

And then it's messages from Robin - all photo notifications that she scrolls past to catch Sidney's last message: twenty minutes ago, a simple, _Did you survive the night?_

 _I did, but those pesky three pounds I've been trying to lose probably did not_ , she shoots back, and then _How are you faring?_

She flicks over to Robin's messages, grinning at photo after photo of their boys - a selfie of Henry and Roland taken in the car - Henry's face tight in the frame and the younger boy in his car seat; her son biting savagely into what looks like a McDonald's Egg McMuffin (Regina scowls - fast food isn't something she usually allows); then the Zoo entrance; another selfie of Henry with something blurry and striped in the wobbly background (zebra, maybe?); the boys in front of the monkey enclosure.

A notification pops up at the top of her screen. Sidney: _I think I'm missing several internal organs, and would welcome death._

She laughs, shaking her head slightly and thinking she knows how he feels. It's a small comfort - a very small comfort - that her poor showing at their date is somehow balanced out by the fact that his choice in restaurant left them both making very intimate friends with the toilet bowl.

 _If you die, do I get your accounts?_ she replies, before switching back to Robin and telling him, _Looks like you boys are having fun._

Sidney is first to reply with a _ha ha_ and _Yes, I'll bequeath them to you in my wil_ l, Robin hot on his heels with _They are. How are you feeling?_

She ignores Sidney for the moment, not quite up to more half-hearted flirting and tells Robin, _Less like death but still like crap._ His response is immediate, a frowny emoji and another assurance that if she needs anything to just let him know. _I think I just need more rest_ , she replies. Adding, _Thank you for everything. You didn't have to do all this._

_All of what?_

_Taking Henry. Checking on me. Cleaning up._

_It was no problem._

It wasn't. She knows that. As mortifying as it was for her, it wasn't hard for him to stop by, to check in, to take care of her. But still, it's far more than he had to do, especially with her having told him just days ago that she wanted space. Wanted to be left alone. She wonders, would she have done the same? If he had been the one puking his guts up, would she have taken Roland? Would she have comforted Robin?

She doesn't think so; she'd have been too stubborn. The realization has something in her feeling guilty and rotten.

Apples and oranges, she tells herself. He has a roommate, and an ex-girlfriend who could come retrieve their son at a moment's notice. She has her parents, sure, but not that late at night. And Daniel is dead and buried, no father to come pick Henry up if Regina is sick and run-down. It's just her. Except it hadn't been, not last night or today. She hadn't asked (to be fair, Henry had), and still he'd shown up. Had relieved her burden, had taken her child in for the night and distracted him for the day. Had brought her drinks, had been thoughtful and caring.

He's better than her, she thinks darkly, pressing her face into the softness of her pillow as she lets her phone rest on the bed for a moment. She's pushing him away, and he's caring for her all the same.

She wouldn't have been there for him. She'd have wanted to be, but she'd have stayed home.

She knows it.

Does that make her selfish or smart, she wonders?

And can they ever really be friends if his every kindness makes something in her middle throb painfully at what they've lost?

Her answer is a long time coming, several minutes stretching by as she sinks deeper into her self-loathing, before she taps out _, I really appreciate it._

His reply is instantaneous: _Anything for this kid's mum_ , with a picture of Henry grinning in front of the cobra in the reptile house.

Regina sets her phone face down on the mattress and curls tighter around her pillow, shutting eyes and heart just the same.

**.::.**

Marian's going to kill him.

Marian, who ensures each meal has fruit and milk and other assorted healthy things. Marian, who Roland tells everything to, surely - who would murder Robin twice over if he tried to get Roland to lie to her on his behalf - is going to kill him when she finds out that after a second breakfast of McDonald's hash browns and half a McGriddle, he let the boys split a bag of cotton candy when they spied the vendor, and is now sitting across from them in the zoo food court while they eat vaguely animal-shaped chicken nuggets and french fries.

At least he has them drinking water, he thinks.

"Come on, my boy, a few more nuggets," Robin urges. Roland puffs his cheeks out with a miserable exhale, chin settling into his hands as his elbows rest on the table.

The nuggets are in reaction to the candy floss, which had had Roland complaining of a sore head and tummy in short order - no surprise, considering how much sugar was probably in the McGriddle, and the fact that Robin had forgotten to pack up water bottles for the boys. They're sugar-stuffed, the both of them (Regina will probably read him the riot act, too, come to think of it), and probably dehydrated. He'd thought proper food would help, and for Henry it seems to have. The first few nuggets went down with trepidation, but now he's cleared the rest of them and is munching happily on his fries and talking about the reptile house.

Roland has had exactly one nugget, and is still bemoaning his bellyache.

"I don't want it, Daddy," he whines. "My tummy is too icky."

Robin steals a nugget and dips it in barbeque sauce, figuring if they're battling on two they won't make it to six, reasoning, "But a bit of lunch might help your icky tummy. It's all sugared up from the candy floss. Just one more for me, hmm?" before popping it into his mouth.

Roland flops, one arm falling open, his head dropping to cushion on it as he whines another refusal.

Robin becomes acutely aware of the fact that they've hit naptime. He should have brought the stroller.

Henry sips his water, then asks, "Have you heard from my mom?"

Robin swallows, shaking his head. "Not for a bit, no. But she said she was starting to feel better, last she texted."

It had been over an hour ago, right around the time of the great error in judgment that was the cotton candy.

"Try a fry, at least," Robin urges Roland, pushing the little paper tray toward his son, and having it grumpily pushed back at him in response.

Henry watches, then turns to the younger boy and says," Hey, Roland," with a hint of mischief. "How many fries do you think I can fit in my mouth?"

Well, that's just a recipe for choking and the worsening of stomachaches, Robin thinks, but then Roland is picking his head up, a sneaky little smile on his face as he looks at Henry.

Robin waits.

Henry grabs three fries, biting down about halfway into them and grinning at Roland. His toddler giggles, then laughs even harder when Henry shoves them in the rest of the way and chews and chews and chews.

"Betcha can't do two," Henry challenges around a mouthful of half-chewed potato, and Roland reaches immediately for the fries, cramming two into his mouth before Robin can stop him and giggling as he chews.

Well, that's one way to do it.

"One fry at a time, please," Robin warns, watching Roland with his heart in his throat, alert for signs of choking, flicking his gaze to Henry for a moment and adding, "That goes for both of you. Last thing I need is to end up having to Heimlich you and admit to your mother it was because I let you literally stuff yourself with junk."

"Sorry," Henry says, sounding only mildly contrite. He turns his attention back to Roland, and says, "Okay, new game. I bet you can't finish your nuggets before I finish my fries."

Roland's expression shifts to one of determination as he swallows his mouthful of fries and takes a gulp of water, before reaching for his second nugget as Henry picks up a single fry and chews it methodically.

Robin wonders when this kid got so good at tricking the younger set into eating, considering he's an only child, but he's not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

His phone beeps, a text popping up on the screen from Regina, and Robin keeps one eye on the boys as he reaches to read it.

_If it's not too much trouble, could you pick up some peppermint tea on your way home? I'm almost out._

She's made it to the kitchen, then, at least - an accomplishment considering how bed-bound she'd seemed this morning.

He taps out a reply - _Of course. The green and white box, right?_ \- feeling more relieved than he probably has a right to to know that she's up and about.

Roland is already on his next nugget, and Robin thinks Henry may have earned himself something from the gift shop.

Regina texts again - a picture of the box and _This one_ , and then a second later _But only if its not too out of your way_.

 _It's fine, luv_ he assures, and then _Anything else as long as I'm coming by?_

_No, that's it. How's the zoo?_

_Good. Overrun with monkeys. And animals on display._

_Ha. Hope the monkeys aren't giving you too much trouble - or mine at least._

Robin glances up at more giggles from Roland to see that Henry has shoved a fry between lip and gum over each incisor and is doing his best walrus impression.

_He's good. Just conned Roland into eating a proper lunch. Did you by chance use bribery competition and animal impressions to get him to eat his food when he was little?_

He tips his phone up to snap a picture just before Henry shifts the fries down into his mouth and chomps into them, sending it to Regina as he waits for her reply.

It comes just as the photo finishes sending: _I have no idea what you're talking about. I would never do such a thing._ chased shortly thereafter by _Is this McDonalds pt 2?_

Robin gulps, mentally.

_This is zoo food court part one, in fact._

_Any chance it involved a fruit or vegetable?_

_Potatoes are veg_

_No, they're starch._

_I'll get something better on the way home - any requests? I could bring you dinner._

_Ugh not ready for food. I'm just glad to be keeping down tea and water._

_Do you want me to keep him for dinner?_

_After McDonalds and now this, I'm not entirely sure…._

_If I promise dinner is 60% fruit or veg?_

_Real veg?_

_Yes. Carrots. Cucumbers. Salad. I will channel my inner Regina._

_Ha. Ha. Fine. Thank you. Putting the phone down for a while._

_K. See you in a bit._

Robin sets his phone down to the discovery that Roland has cleared all of his nuggets, and is now rubbing his stuffed tummy, Henry looking very pleased with himself beside him.

"How's it feel?" Robin asks, nodding toward Roland's belly.

His son frowns a little, assessing, then brightens as he declares, "Better! You were right!"

"Are you stuffed?"

"Yep!"

"And you, Henry?"

The older boy nods, gulping at his water before saying, "I'm good."

"Well, then let's clear these trays and see if we can't find ourselves a lion or two, hmm?"

The full bellies earn him a reprieve from the meltdown of a delayed naptime, but it's not a permanent fix, and within an hour, he has a sore-footed, exhausted preschooler on his hip as they head for the gift shop.

"I wan' a monkey, Daddy," Roland mumbles around his thumb, his head resting on Robin's shoulder. He tries not to jostle the boy too much as he shifts his hold, steering them toward the little shop up ahead.

"Then a monkey you shall have, my boy," Robin assures, rubbing a hand up and down Roland's back. "Henry, you can pick out one thing, too."

"I can?" Henry asks, brightening, and earning a smile from Robin.

"Of course," he assures, adding with a wink, "For your help with lunch."

The gift shop is a veritable plush zoo of its own, walls and shelves full of various stuffed toys and figurines and books and such. Robin shifts Roland again, his little body growing heavier by the moment - a sure sign that their window for letting him pick his own monkey is rapidly closing - so he tells Henry to stay in sight but poke around all he wants, and heads for the nearest monkeys he can find. They have them in blue and grey and green, some big enough to be half Roland's height, others pocket-sized.

"Which one shall we take home?" he asks softly, combing his fingers through Roland's curls before shifting him to the other arm.

"Grey one," Roland mumbles, pointing a damp, slightly slobbery finger toward a generously sized grey and white monkey at eye level. Thank God for quick decision-makers, Robin thinks, reaching out to grasp the monkey and hand it to his son. Roland wraps an arm around it immediately and snuggles it into Robin's chest. Monkey acquired.

He finds Henry two aisles over, standing slightly back from the shelving and perusing a row of books. They're educational, but geared toward children, all about different types of animals.

"What are we thinking?" he asks, skimming the titles as Henry does. By the time he makes his selection - a book about cobras, and another about aquatic mammals - Roland is dead-weight in Robin's arms, his monkey gripped loosely in lax fingers.

**.::.**

She's half-asleep on the sofa in the den when she hears the front door open, Robin calling out her name softly.

Her head feels strange, caught in that place between sleep and wakefulness, and she thinks she answers him, but she's not entirely certain. Even if she had, the TV is on, she's not sure he'd hear her.

Either way, he appears a few minutes later, stepping into view and giving her a smile as he tells her, "I put your tea in the kitchen." His gaze flicks to the empty mug on the coffee table in front of her, and he asks, "Do you want a fresh cup?"

Regina shakes her head and inhales deeply, shifting from her side to her back with a soft grunting stretch, and then relaxing into the cushions.

"Not right now," she tells him, watching as he seems to hesitate between staying safely at the end of the couch or venturing closer. She yawns, pressing a hand to her mouth, and by the time it passes, he's made up his mind, the couch cushions sinking somewhere near her knees as he perches on the edge, his hand settling on the bend of her leg, a layer of sweatpants and blanket between her skin and his.

"How's the patient?" he asks, a gentleness to his voice that makes her ache all over again. This is crap.

She shuts her eyes, breathes, tells him, "Tired. But I haven't thrown up yet today. Haven't eaten yet, either."

His thumb coasts back and forth across her knee, a welcome comfort and a knife to her belly. How is she ever going to manage friendship? She needs a clean break. They need a clean break. Time to stitch up all these emotional wounds in peace and separation. She knows this. But she still can't bring herself to stop the gentle comfort of his hand.

"John's grilling tonight," he tells her. "Steaks and corn on the cob. And we have strawberries and watermelon, a bit of salad. I can bring you something if you're feeling up to it."

She exhales slowly, shaking her head and opening her eyes again. "No food. Not ready for food. Just the thought of all that food…" She trails off and swallows thickly, and he pats his hand gently against her knee.

"Got it. Food bad, tea good, hmm?"

"Yeah," Regina sighs, taking the time to study him in a way she hasn't been equipped to in the last two times he'd been here. He looks good, in a white t-shirt and jeans, his skin a bit sun-kissed from their day at the zoo. She frowns. "Did you remember sunscreen for Henry today?"

Robin winces. "He… may be a bit singed on the forehead." Regina sighs, and Robin rushes ahead, "Not too badly. Just a tad pink is all. We were outdoors for the middle of the day."

One dark brow lifts, enough of a you-should-know-better without the necessity of words.

"It was a bit of a parenting fail all around," he admits. "Bellyaches, and sunburns, and Roland's only nap was about fifteen minutes as I carried him through the giftshop and to the car and then the ride home. During which, by the way, your son inquired once again about what's going on between us."

Great. Just great.

"You shouldn't encourage him," she grumbles, and Robin stiffens, jaw clenching and then relaxing.

"I'm not. I told him the same thing I told him yesterday when he came scrambling to me about your date - that he needs to drop this, and respect your - our - wishes. Something that doesn't endear him to me in the slightest, by the way."

Regina's stomach twists with nerves, her skin flashing hot then cold, armpits itching with a sudden bloom of sweat. She feels her cheeks heat, embarrassed that he knows about her date with Sidney, and then angry that she's embarrassed because she has every right, and owes this man nothing. They weren't - they aren't - this was never -

And then she scowls.

"Henry went to your place yesterday?"

"He did," Robin confirms with a single nod. "He wanted me to come convince you not to go. To tell you how much I love you, and fight for us."

Another bolt of anxious adrenaline rips through Regina's middle, kicking up her nausea and making her press her lips together and swallow thickly. He'd said it so matter of factly - _tell you how much I love you_ \- that she can't tell if he's just regurgitating Henry's words or if he actually feels that way.

She wants to ask, wants to know for sure, but at the same time… what good would it do? Knowing. It doesn't change things. It doesn't change her mother, it doesn't change what he did, it doesn't change the pointlessness of trying to build a relationship that may never be able to progress to the "meeting the family" stage.

So instead she says, "He shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry."

Robin's shoulder lifts, and falls. "He doesn't know. Doesn't understand."

"You think he should?" she challenges, and Robin shakes his head, says that's not what he meant.

"I just think he's trying to reconcile what he's seen, and what he knows, and it doesn't add up for him," Robin explains, shifting in a way that has the length of his thigh pressing against hers, his knee resting against her hip. "He's ten; the complexities of adult relationships are a bit beyond his years."

"Ours are more complex than most, I think," she mutters, and Robin gives her a wry smile.

"To say the least."

"I don't know how to help him understand," Regina admits quietly, looking down at her bent knees instead of at Robin. "His father is gone." Her voice breaks on the last word, tears welling, and Goddamnit, this is not what she needs right now. She is overtired, and heartbroken, and he doesn't need to see her cry, but here he is, sliding his hand to wrap gently around hers as she blinks back tears and swallows thickly. "I want him to have a man in his life who is confident, and smart, and kind-hearted, and who maybe forgets the sunscreen or just exactly what constitutes a proper meal for a growing child. But a good man." She looks back to Robin, sees her own pain mirrored on his face, framed thickly with the familiar darkness of self-hatred. "And I believe you are a good man. He adores you. And I don't want him to lose that."

She pauses to sniffle and wipe at a stubborn tear, and Robin takes the moment's reprieve to murmur an apology that has Regina shaking her head.

"It's fine. You've apologized enough. I just… I'm stuck having to explain to my ten year old that sometimes you can't be with the people you want to be. That sometimes you have to put your children first, or your…" She sucks in a breath, blows it out, shifts her gaze to the ceiling. "He knows my mother is… critical. He knows she can be hurtful. But he's never truly seen how much of a shark she can be. How ruthless. How unforgiving. He's growing up so fast, but he's just a boy. He still believes in fairy tales, and true love, and things that are meant to be. And I want him to. I don't know how to explain to him that Robin broke the law, and Grandma might make him pay for that. I don't want him to lose faith in the people he loves."

Robin's fingers are still toying with hers, the calloused pads of his fingertips rubbing against the smooth softness of hers. She should stop him. Should, but doesn't. She keeps her fingers lax, doesn't reciprocate the affection of his touch, but she drinks in what he offers all the same.

"I should have told you straight off," Robin mutters. "This is all my fault."

"You should have," she agrees, looking at him again. "But I know why you didn't."

Looking at him was a mistake. He looks as miserable as she feels, and even though this is all a mess, even though this - what they had, what they could have had - is broken, there's a part of her that just wants to make that hurt stop. He needs to go. Having him here, with the way she feels, and the way he feels, it's… not good. Dangerous, if she doesn't want to end up doing something rash and stupid.

So she disentangles her fingers from his, finally, links them with her own across her belly and says, "I appreciate everything you did for me and Henry, last night and today. Truly. Thank you." He starts to say it was nothing, but she's not done, and if she doesn't make him go right now, she won't. So she tells him, "But this, right now? Staying and talking and holding my hand… This isn't really… giving me space. Sitting here talking about us, it… it just hurts."

He straightens at that, ducks his head as his spine lifts, his palms rubbing the denim over his thighs. "Right. I should go. John's going to think I was just trying to get out of shucking corn anyway."

It's an attempt at humor, and even though she aches, even though she feels like one big bruise, she gives him a little smile, tells him, "Can't have that," and watches as he stands.

"I'll send Henry by after supper," he tells her, scratching at the back of his neck, not meeting her eyes. There's a tension that pulls between them, a taut cord of longing that protests at every inch it's forced to span from his body to hers, and it makes her eyes well again. "And, uh, I'll try to think of more things Henry and I can do together, during the week maybe, while he's still off school. Try to be that man you want in his life."

Regina nods, lips pressed tightly together, swallowing against the lump in her throat.

He starts to head for the door, and she has every intention of letting him, but then her mouth is moving, words pushing them up and out: "Robin, I-" He stops, turns back to her, and the words stick for a moment, before she forces them out: "I want you in _my_ life, too. I want to be friends, I really do. But I can't do it right now."

His hands find his pockets and sink in as he bobs his head once, looking at his shoes for a second before one side of his mouth forces its way up in a poor imitation of his usual smirk. It comes out looking more like a grimace. "I'll leave you be. When you're ready, let me know. And if you're going to go on more dates, you pick the food, yeah?"

She lets out a wet scoff, and tells him, "Yeah. I'll do that. Send some watermelon home wit Henry? I'm not hungry yet, but maybe later."

"Alright," he agrees, giving her one last, long look before he turns to go.

Regina feels that thread between them stretch and stretch, feels the pull of it pinching in her chest. The soft echo of the front door closing brings a sense of relief, and she imagines the cord snapping.

Imagines herself free of it.

If only it were so easy.

**.::.**

After dinner, Robin sends Henry home, and brings Roland back to Marian.

And then he returns home, heads straight for the kitchen, and the small lockbox on the top shelf of the leftmost cabinet. He sets it down and opens it, scowling all the while, the sharp herbal scent of marijuana wafting up from the countertop. Robin grabs a thin paper from the pack tucked along the inside edge of the box, portions out a bit of the herb and then rolls and seals the joint before bringing it to his lips.

He lights, and inhales deeply, the familiar smoky heat filling his lungs. He holds it for a moment, swallowing and then exhaling a slow, fragrant plume. It's been a while since he dipped into John's stash, but after his conversation with Regina tonight he has the distinct and strong urge to not think or feel for a little while. He wants the pleasant numbness, the dullness.

Robin takes his joint to the living room and sits down wordlessly on the opposite end of the sofa from John.

"Rough day at the zoo?" his friend asks, and Robin shoots him a glare as he takes another pull.

When he's exhaled, he says darkly, "I'm a complete and utter arse."

John's thick brows rise slowly. "Marian or Regina?"

"Regina."

John nods once, asks, "Anything you can do?"

No, Robin broods. He's done bloody enough as it is. But he answers with, "Leave her alone for a bit. It's what she's asked." With that look on her face like it hurt her to get the words out, like he's stomping on her heart all over again. And he's responsible for that, he made her feel this way. Because he let all of this happen, knowing what he did - knowing what he'd done.

"You're doing a bang-up job of that," John mutters, thick with sarcasm and Robin feels a flare of temper.

"Sod off. She was sick," he defends.

He doesn't feel bad about going to the house last night. She needed Henry out of her hair. He believes in the sincerity of her gratitude for that, at least. It was everything else - this morning (her brief bout of tears as he'd rubbed her back haunts him, has a grinding, hot shame in his guts - he shouldn't have touched her like that, shouldn't have acted like he had the right to, not after she'd asked him to leave her alone for a while) and lingering tonight.

He hadn't intended on talking - just wanted to smoke and sulk, but he finds himself telling John what he already knows: "I fucked up. And she's trying to protect me. She shouldn't have to." He takes another quick puff of the joint, and continues, "And now she's gone on a date with this… bastard. Who doesn't deserve her." His thumbs the unlit end of the joint, agitated, as he scowls, "Who I was fairly certain she didn't much like, from the few times she mentioned him. And she did it because of me. Because she wants to be with me, and she can't be. And it hurts her. _I'm_ hurting her. My _being here_ hurts her."

He has the irrational thought that he should move. Should get his own place - he's making enough, he probably could. Not in this neighborhood, but somewhere. Somewhere away from her. He doesn't lend voice to the thought, brings the joint to his lips instead, and tells himself that moving would be a bit overdramatic. It's not as though they keep the same hours. Avoiding Regina is easy enough - with the hours they keep, and Henry taking lessons here, he doesn't even really have to try.

"I'm sorry, brother," John says, when Robin's been quiet for a while. He's sorry, too. She doesn't want to hear it anymore, it seems, but he feels it all the same. He feels a lot of inconvenient things these days, and so, it seems, does she.

Right now, he's starting to feel a bit stoned.

"I love her," Robin tells his roommate, as everything starts to slow and expand. He still feels the agitation he's been suppressing since this afternoon, but it's less. The self-loathing, though, that's still firmly in place, and he's not yet feeling empty-headed. He's still broody enough to continue, "You're not supposed to hurt the women you love. And it's all I've bloody done the last half a year. Hurt people I love."

"You and Marian had been going bad for a while," John points out, as Robin shifts the joint in his hand, studying the lit end, turning the rapidly dwindling paper cigarette to and fro.

"Had we?" he challenges.

"Robin, you know you had."

"Maybe so," he concedes, because he still remembers the day Marian had ended things, officially, and the numbness he'd felt. The startling lack of real heartbreak. They probably had been on their way out. "But I'm the one screwed up and ended everything. I'm the reason my son doesn't get to see his father every day. And I make Regina cry. And there's not a bloody thing I can do to fix any of it. I'm sodding useless."

"You can do what she asks."

"I am."

"There you go," John concedes, reaching a hand over and gesturing for Robin to pass the joint his way. "Let her heal."

Robin scowls. It's his bloody joint - but it's John's bloody pot - so he surrenders it for a moment, and slouches down further into the couch cushions, lifting his hands and pressing the heels of his palms into his eye sockets for a moment.

"I miss her. And I hate the thought of her with anyone else."

He can still see it, her leaving the night before. In that bright blue dress, and those heels. Can still feel the burning envy of it, the itch to do exactly as Henry asks and fight fucking Sidney Glass for her. But he's no right to, he knows that.

And so does John, telling him, "That's not really your call, though, brother."

Robin drops his hands and reaches for the joint again, muttering, "I know that. Doesn't make it any easier."

John makes this face - a sort of sympathetic agreement - and then hauls himself to his feet, dropping the remote a few inches to Robin's left on his way to the kitchen, and telling him, "Here, you pick."

Robin thinks about it for a moment, and then realizes that, no, he isn't thinking about it. He's just sitting, staring at the remote, listening to John fiddle with the box in the kitchen. He doesn't feel the urge to watch anything in particular anyway.

"I don't care," he answers, raising his voice just enough to be heard. "I just want to finish this, and then maybe another. Get high as a bloody kite and then go to bed."

"You want a beer while I'm in here?" John asks, as Robin takes another drag on the joint and nods even though John likely isn't looking.

By the time he exhales, he's changed his mind anyway. He doesn't want a beer. He wants something stronger.

"Bring me a whiskey."


	24. Chapter 24

Robin wakes to the painfully insistent dinging of the doorbell and Tuck’s incessant barking in response, something he doesn’t think he should be subjected to at any time, much less whatever bloody time it is now and with as much whiskey as he’d managed to pour into himself last night.

 

It takes him a moment to realize he’s still on the couch, still in his clothes, a blanket half-falling off him as he sits, head spinning and throbbing, stomach pitching. Fuck. Good God. 

Whoever is at his door had better have a damn good reason to be. 

And where the bloody hell is John? Probably sleeping like a bloody rock in his own bed, lucky bastard.

Robin hauls himself to his feet, pressing a hand to his temple both in a vain attempt to ease the pounding and in order to keep the room from spinning quite so much.

“Shut it,” he growls at the dog, giving him a yank away from the door, before he flips the locks and yanks it open.

Marian. Shit. And Roland. Even worse.

She gives him a look up and down, her expression turning from one of frustration to disgust.

Robin leans against the door frame and scowls, asking, “Why’re you here today?”

Marian’s dark brows rise, her hand tightening on Roland’s shoulder. He’s looking up at Robin with a tentative frown, and he thinks he must look truly awful if his own son is so hesitant.

“His daycare called this morning – half the staff is out with some particularly nasty strain of strep, so they closed. And his usual sitter is out of town – I thought maybe I could leave our son with his father, and when you didn’t answer your phone I hoped maybe you just forgot to charge it, but I guess you were too busy,” her voice drops to a hiss, her tone as accusatory as her expression, “Sleeping off a bender. I’ll find somewhere else to take him.”

“No, wait—” She’s started to turn, but Robin reaches out, grasps her shoulder long enough to still her, then drops his hand. “I can watch him.”

Marian’s laugh is short and sharp. “You smell like someone threw a Dead concert in a distillery, and look like you’re about two seconds from hurling your guts up. I don’t think so, Robin.”

He scrubs a hand over his face and tries to pull himself together, although he feels roughly the way she described. His head is swimming and throbbing, and nausea nudges against the back of his throat, lines his stomach with an oily heat. But he’s not a deadbeat, he is not a bad father, he will never be that. He will not let whatever potentially ill-advised decisions he made last night keep him from his son today, so he shifts his weight from doorframe to feet, and tells her, “I’m hungover, but I’m fine. I didn’t think I’d be watching him today, and John and I had a bit much to drink last night is all. But I can watch Roland. And besides, you’ll be late for work if you have to bring him anywhere else.”

It’s a shot in the dark; he has no idea what time it actually is, but she’s dressed for work, and so he thinks it’s probably a fair bet. Sure enough, she sighs, and glances down at Roland, her internal debate clear on her face. 

“You smell like pot,” she mutters between clenched teeth, as if Roland will somehow not understand the words. 

“It was last night; I’m fine.” He tries another angle, “If we still lived together, you’d leave him with me.”

It’s the wrong move, Marian levels him with a glare and says, “If you still lived with me, you wouldn’t be such a hot mess right now. Unless you’d been at work last night, but we both know you’re not gigging.”

Robin clenches his teeth together. It’s a low blow, but one he maybe deserves just now. 

“It’s not been a great week,” he mutters, his gaze flicking toward Regina’s before he can steel it back toward Marian. “I threw myself a right pity party, and maybe I shouldn’t have, but I didn’t think I had to be anywhere until three today, so there didn’t seem much harm.” Marian sighs, lifts her hand from Roland’s shoulder and glances at her watch. “Marian. You know I’d never let anything happen to him.”

She stares and stares at him, and then crouches down in front of Roland and says, “You be good for Daddy today, okay, sweetheart?” and Robin’s middle unclenches with relief. Roland nods, and kisses his mother on the cheek, and then she’s urging him to go inside and say hello to Tuck – a clear indication that she wants to have words with Robin in private. He drops a hand to the soft curls on Roland’s head as the boy scampers inside, already calling the dog’s name, and then he tugs the door nearly shut behind him and waits for the onslaught.

“Thank you,” he says, as Marian crosses her arms tightly.

“I don’t want him around the drugs, or the drinking,” she tells Robin sternly. “I’ve always said that – I know the guys like to have a good time, but he is just a little boy, and—”

“I promise,” Robin interrupts here. “I would never, not while he’s here. Neither would John.”

“You look like shit,” Marian tells him bluntly, and Robin rubs a hand across his head again and nods. 

“Probably do. I slept on the couch.”

“Is this bad week something I need to be concerned about?”

“No,” he assures her. “It’s me. A woman. I fucked up another good thing, that’s all.”

“The neighbor?” 

Robin crosses his arms over his chest, hunches into them a bit, and nods. “Doesn’t matter. I should never have gotten involved with her anyway; it wasn’t ever going to work out. But it’s on me. You don’t have to worry about it – it won’t affect Roland.”

For the first time that morning, Marian’s expression shifts toward something resembling sympathy, her head bobbing up and down slowly. “I should go,” she tells him almost reluctantly. “Do you work tonight?”

He shakes his head, tells her, “No, I’m off Mondays. I can handle dinner and all that.”

“Okay,” she sighs, and then, “Call if you need anything.”

“We’ll be fine,” Robin assures, pushing down the swell of resentment he feels every time she acts like he needs help with this, with caring for their son the same way he has every weekend for the last four months and the three years before that.

And then she’s leaving, and Robin heads back inside, thinking to himself that this is going to be a very long day.

**.::.**

Regina wakes Monday feeling human again, well enough to work, thankfully, but not entirely mended. She doesn’t feel like herself quite yet, but she still manages to shower (she’d made a cursory attempt yesterday, standing under the warm spray and giving her slimy, smelly body a lather and rinse, letting the water run on her hair but not bothering with shampoo or conditioner), and dress, and check on Henry (still out cold) before heading in for work. 

She skips the coffee today, packs the watermelon Henry had brought from Robin’s into a tupperware, and steeps herself a travel mug full of peppermint tea, slipping a few more teabags into her purse. Her stomach feels hollow and raw, aching dully with what she is fairly certain is hunger, not illness. But after the last few days, she can’t be entirely sure, so she holds off on the watermelon for now. 

She’ll eat at work, where a bathroom is readily (if mortifyingly) available should she need one. 

She’s late to the office – late for her, anyway – and when she arrives it’s to a massive bouquet of colorful blooms on her desk, a crisp white card in the middle of them. 

Her stomach twists and flushes hot (something she doesn’t need right now, as uneasy as she already feels), fingers plucking the little envelope from the bouquet and slipping it open.

Relief floods her at the familiar handwriting: “Sorry for the food poisoning. Maybe we can try again? – Sidney” 

She never thought she’d associate relief with Sidney Glass, but as awkward as their date had been, and despite the gruesome aftermath, he’s the less complicated male relationship in her life at the moment. She taps the card against her fingertips and considers – a second date could be good for her. And the first one may have been… less than ideal, but it was through no fault of Sidney’s. But is her heart really in it right now?

“Good morning.”

She jumps at the sounds of Sidney’s voice, pressing a hand to her heart as she turns toward him. He looks a bit peaky, a bit worn around the edges, but his smile is genuine, the same eager curl of lips he usually has for her. 

“Hi,” she greets. “These are lovely; thank you.”

“I figured it was the least I could do after what I put you through,” he grimaces, stepping into her office, into her space, and reaching for her hand. His fingers wrap around hers, clammy and cool as usual, and Regina fights the urge to draw back, pushes the thought of someone else’s warm hands from her mind. “I hope you’re feeling better?”

“I am,” she assures with a smile, giving his hand a squeeze, and then drawing her fingers back. Or attempting to. Sidney tightens his grip for a moment, and she murmurs a reminder that, “We’re at work.” He releases her then with a little clearing of his throat, and a nod, and Regina smoothes her hands over the nonexistent creases in her skirt and tells him, “Thank you for the other night. Puking aside, I really did need to get out for a little while.”

“I meant what I said in that card,” he tells her. “Let’s have a do-over – you can pick where we eat this time; I surrender myself entirely to your whims.”

Regina laughs softly, and nods before she’s really thought it through. Sidney relaxes visibly, and she thinks  _ Shit _ and  _ No turning back now _ , and then she asks herself what harm a second date with a man who admires her could really do? She’ll do better this time. Will pick somewhere she’s comfortable – maybe The Magic Bean, maybe something a little more casual – and she will  _ not _ spend half the night thinking of someone else. She will give Sidney – and herself – a fair shot.

And then she’ll know. If it’s terrible, she’ll call it off. Break his heart gently, as usual, and go back to their normal routine.

If it’s not terrible, well, then maybe she’ll finally have something to draw her attention from this gnawing, aching loneliness she’s been carrying.

“Give me another day or two to get my appetite back, and I’ll let you know what I’ve decided,” she tells him. 

“I’ll be waiting by the phone,” Sidney flirts, hanging around until she settles in at her desk before he finally heads off to resume his own work.

**.::.**

Robin loves his son. Adores him. Would give the world for him twice over.

But today has been just a few metres short of hell, to be honest. Roland’s not a difficult child, never has been, and today was no different in that regard. But Robin’s hangover has lingered, a persistent, tight throbbing in his skull that refuses to abate – and how could it? He’d popped a handful of aspirin as he’d fixed himself (and Roland at his insistence) a fried egg sandwich, but what he’d really needed was another hour or so of good, hard sleep.

Not an option with a toddler in the house – and neither was the irritability he’d felt at being woken so early, at the sluggishness and discomfort and bloody self-loathing brought on by last night’s relatively poor decision-making. He’s a right to a drink now and then, but he’d gone rather overboard, and it seems the universe is thrilled to bloody bits to show him how much. Roland had resisted every attempt of Robin’s to engage in something quiet – like cartoons or coloring – had wanted instead to take Tuck to the park, to play fetch, had wanted Robin to help him with the monkey bars again and spin with him on the merry-go-round (he’d taken a hard pass on that one, instead guiding it in slow, gentle revolutions with Roland perched carefully on the surface, and even that had been enough to make him feel vaguely ill).  

He’d never been more glad to see nap time. 

It had given him a chance to finally shower, a chance to lie down for a blessed twenty minutes. His body had been screaming for sleep, but that fucking headache had had other ideas, and he’d lain there, keeping time to the throbbing beat until Roland had woken only an hour after he’d gone down, ready and raring to go again – and hungry to boot.

There had been lunch, and then coloring (thank God), which Roland had insisted they do together. So Robin had parked himself on the floor next to the coffee table, and drawn doggies, and trucks, and stars, and arrows, had guided Roland’s small hands through the shape of a bunny rabbit until his son had beamed with pride, named the slightly wobbly critter Flop, and deemed it a gift for Mama when he went home tonight.

Come to think of it, the afternoon hadn’t been so terrible. They’d stayed mostly indoors, had worked the crayons until they both smelled of wax and paper, and then there’d been demands for Muppets during an afternoon snack. 

But now, it’s evening and Henry is here. He’d clomped up the steps at roughly ten past seven, guitar in hand, face set in a scowl.

“You said this wasn’t so I would have lessons here,” he’d told Robin accusingly as they'd headed back into his little studio. 

“I did, and I meant it,” Robin had responded, “But your mum and I discussed it a few days ago, and decided it might be best for you to take your lessons at my place for a while.”

“So you don’t have to see each other?”

“Yes,” Robin had said frankly, and then, “But we both know that’s not something your mother or I want to talk about with you, yeah?”

Henry’s eye roll in response would put a teenager to shame.

“I still think you’re both being dumb,” he’d declared, plunking down into the open seat and unzipping his guitar case. Robin hadn’t bothered to respond, had focused on getting Roland situated in the corner with his things. Books to flip through, and puzzles, his crayons and paper.

A fat lot of good it had done.

Henry for company and the excitement of guitars had been far more interesting, and he has interrupted them no less than five times in twenty minutes, wanting “his turn” with a guitar,  or asking Henry to come look at the puzzle he’s finished, telling Robin he’s thirsty, asking if he and Henry can have popcorn for snacking.

Robin has met each interruption with mounting frustration, slow exhales and internal reminders of patience, silent regrets for not telling Marian he needed him picked up by six-thirty. 

When Roland interrupts yet again, Henry sees the tick in Robin’s jaw as he gently reminds the boy he needs to play quietly now, they’re having a lesson, and says, “You know, my mom would probably take him for a little while if you asked.”

He shouldn’t. He’s to give her space. It’s not giving her space if he calls on her every other day, but half an hour of time with his son, well… Is that pushing? 

In the space it takes him to mull over the idea, to narrow his eyes slightly and try to figure out if this is Henry trying once again to maneuver them closer, the older boy looks to Roland and says, “You wanna go hang out with my mom for a while? She was gonna make cookies.”

Roland’s eyes light up, head nodding eagerly. “Yes, please! Daddy, I wanna see Regina!”

It’s been a while, he knows. Weeks since their last joint play date with the boys, and Roland has missed her. Plus, he’s had the prospect of cookies dangled before him, and who can resist that?

Not entirely sure this isn’t a bad idea, he reaches for his phone and calls her.

**.::.**

She needs to eat.

She knows this, logically, she knows this. A cup of watermelon and several mugs of tea are not enough food to sustain a person through two days. She’s hungry, she thinks. Can feel that hollow grinding in her middle that means hungry, but she’s still fighting the last dregs of exhaustion and unease from her food poisoning, so her mind keeps putting up red flags. Nothing sounds appetizing. Everything sounds like it might send her body back into revolt.

But she’s all too aware of how a blue mood can spiral into unhealthy habits, and she’s been doing so well this summer, even despite all the emotional turmoil. She hasn’t let herself slip into an abundance of skipped meals, into a tightening of her own restrictions. She can’t let a legitimate excuse for an aversion to eating become food avoidance. 

So she’s going to make herself dinner. A proper, if safely bland, dinner. All the food groups.

Just as soon as she finishes these damn cookies.

She can’t quite believe she’s stooped this low - they’re bribery cookies. If Henry has inherited nothing else from her, he’d certainly gotten her iron will. The anger he’d foisted on her at the eleventh-hour revelation that his lessons were going to be next door from now on, and the resulting steely refusal to go to Robin’s, had been too much for her exhausted self to deal with tonight. So she’d bribed him. A batch of fresh-baked cookies would be waiting for him when he got home if he would just march his butt over there already and stop complaining.

So here she is, portioning out freshly-mixed dough onto a cookie sheet to reward her bratty son for his bad behavior.

Not exactly a Mom of the Year moment, but it got him next door.

When her phone rings, and it’s Robin, Regina’s stomach sinks with the expectation that he’s causing trouble  _ there _ too.

She answers with a sighed, “Hey.”

“Hey,” he replies, sounding equally beleaguered. “I hate to ask this of you, and I know we… talked about what we talked about…” So Henry’s right in front of him, then. “But I’ve Roland for the day, and it’s making Henry’s lesson a bit of a challenge. Henry thought maybe you’d want to watch him until we finish up?”

Regina lets out a breath of relief that he’s not calling about her son, but his. And then she frowns.

“You have Roland? On a Monday?”

“His daycare was unexpectedly closed; Marian dropped him here this morning.”

“You should’ve cancelled Henry’s lesson,” she tells him mildly, “We’d never want to cut into your time with your son.”

“I thought I could manage both at once,” he says, and Regina snorts a little laugh. Roland’s an active kid, and he adores Henry – it’s not a leap to assume that trying to quiet him for an hour of lesson time would be a challenge. Something Robin must have realized as well, because he’s answering her laugh with a, “Yeah. Clearly I wasn’t thinking straight. I don’t want to trouble you if you’re still feeling poorly—”

“No, no,” she insists, shaking her head even though he can’t see her. “It’s fine. I’ll come by and grab him in a minute, I’m just throwing something in the oven.”

“I hear tell of cookies,” Robin tells her, and she can damn well hear that curve of his lips, that little smirk that makes his dimples pop. 

“You heard right,” Regina says, and then because she feels she owes him, because he was so incredibly kind to her the last few days when he didn’t need to be, she offers, “Walk Henry back and pick Roland up. I’ll send a few home with you.”

“You’re too good to me,” he tells her warmly, before she hears the soft clearing of his throat and then, “I mean – thank you. I’d appreciate that. The door’s unlocked, just walk in when you get here.”

“Be right over.”

They hang up, and she finishes filling her baking sheet, then slides it into the oven before ducking out of the house and strolling the few yards to Robin’s doorstep.

She lets herself in and hears them in the back – Roland asking if he can “bring his colors” to Regina’s, and Robin answering that he bets Regina has crayons at her place if he’ll ask nicely. She smiles, pads down the hall and pokes her head into the back room. 

“Am I interrupting?” she asks needlessly – Henry’s guitar is on his lap, but he’s not playing, arms crossed atop the body, chin propped on top of them. Robin is across the room helping Roland gather his things. 

“Regina!” Roland greets with a grin, and her own smile widens. 

“Hi, sweetheart,” she tells him warmly. “Are you ready to come over, and let these two get back to their lesson?”

He nods eagerly, scooping up assorted scribbled papers, and a wooden puzzle board that promptly loses two pieces – an apple and a banana – as he tips it up toward his chest. “Yeah, I’m gonna show you my drawings!”

“Careful, Roland,” Robin urges, reaching down and grabbing the errant fruits. He looks frayed around the edges, harried, and she finds herself smiling sympathetically. “You’ll lose your pieces.”

Roland’s “Oops” is just about as adorable as any boy’s could be, and Regina realizes just how much she’s missed spending time with him the last few weeks. 

“Why don’t we leave the puzzle here,” she suggests. “You can come help me scoop another tray of cookies instead, and tell me all about your trip to the zoo.”

His face lights up at that, and he nods, pushes the puzzle board on his father, and trots his way over to her. “Okay! We saw monkeys!”

“I bet you did.” She rakes a hand through the silkiness of his curls, then looks up to find Robin watching them. 

“Thank you for this,” he tells her sincerely. “Truly.”

“It’s no problem,” she assures softly, hoping something in her tone will let him know that this – watching Roland – it’s not something she’s unwilling to do. Spending time with the both of them might be hard on her heart at this point, but she always has time for the younger set of dimples. “Has he eaten?”

“Yeah, we had dinner before Henry came over.”

“So I can have cookies!” Roland chimes in, and Regina laughs. 

“Well, they have to finish baking first, but once they’re done, and they’re cooled, you can have  _ one _ ,” she tells him. “We wouldn’t want to sugar you up too late at night.”

“Mama wouldn’t like that very much at all,” Robin agrees, closing the distance between them and crouching down to his son’s level. “You mind Regina, alright?” Roland nods, and Robin continues, “She’s been sick the last few days, so we mustn’t be too wild.” Roland’s head bobs again, and then Robin is standing, and brushing a hand over his curls, and turning his attention to her. “I’ll come by when we’re done here,” he says, glancing at his watch and frowning. 

“Why don’t you start your hour over,” Regina suggests. It’s pretty clear they hadn’t gotten a whole lot accomplished before he’d called her, and it was just turning half-past when she headed over here. This lesson has mostly been a wash, so far. 

“You’re sure?”

“Considering I’m paying for the time, absolutely,” she tells him with a wry smile, turning her gaze to Henry, who’s still sitting mutely with his guitar, watching them with an intensity that has her suspicious about his hand in all this. “He’s hardly put his guitar down since he went to see you play the other night. I want him to get his time in.”

“Alright,” Robin agrees, inhaling and shoving his hands into his pockets. “Marian’s coming by to pick him up in a bit, but we should be done by then. She made dinner plans, since I said I had him sorted.”

Regina nods, grasps Roland’s soft little fingers when he grabs at her hand, and tells Robin and Henry to take their time. She swings Roland’s hand in her grasp and smiles down at him, insisting, “We’ll keep ourselves entertained, won’t we, Roland?”

“Yep! Bye, Daddy!”

Roland doesn’t spare a glance for Robin as he heads for the door, dragging Regina with him (as much as a three-year-old can drag a full-sized adult). She and Robin share a look of amusement, then she’s giving Henry a glance that she hopes says to behave himself now that he has Robin alone, urging him to, “Work hard tonight; I know there was a lot you wanted to learn.”

She sees Henry’s head nod, chin still on his arms, and then she’s being led out of view.

Roland wants to bring Tuck – asks if the doggy can come over to her house, too – and Regina has to reluctantly tell him no. She can handle childcare for one mild-mannered little boy for an hour, but she doesn’t want to be shooing a dog away from her kitchen while she works. 

He takes her refusal in stride, and by the time they’re halfway down the front walk he’s telling her all about his adventures at the zoo. About the monkeys, and the lion, and the zebras. She  _ ooh _ s and  _ ahh _ s in all the right places, asks him which animals were his favorite. 

She hasn’t been gone long, but when she walks back into her house, she catches the hint of sweetness in the air from her baking cookies, and her stomach cramps with hunger, gurgling noisily. 

Roland’s head turns around at the sound, dark eyes wide as he stares up at her. “Was that your tummy?”

Okay. Time to eat.

“It was,” she confirms with a little grimace. “Unlike you, I have not had my dinner yet. Maybe you can help me with it after we get the next sheet of cookies ready?”

He’s all too eager to help out, tells her, “Yep,” and “What’re you having?” as he marches straight for the kitchen. 

“Hmm, I’m not sure,” she muses. Flipping on the kitchen tap and reminding him, “Clean hands first, mister.” 

He’s not tall enough to reach, not even close, so she grabs the step-stool from the pantry (the one she has to use to reach anything on her top shelves, but insists she keeps around “for Henry”) and helps him climb up onto it, squeezing some soap into his palms and then her own. They both lather thoroughly, Roland picking up a little sing-songy tune about handwashing that lasts about half a minute before he tells her, “That’s the washing song, for how long you wash your hands.”

“Oh, is it?” She guides little hands under the warm running water, rinsing away his suds and her own simultaneously.

“Uh huh. Miss Ariel sings it.”

“At daycare?”

“Mmhmm,” Roland nods. 

“I hear you didn’t go to daycare today.” Regina nudges off the tap, that aching hunger in her middle suddenly acute and distracting. She’ll get to it in a minute, after the cookies are scooped. 

“Nope! I went to the park!”

She snatches a dish towel, wraps it around their hands and rubs them together vigorously enough to make Roland giggle. Asking as she does, “Did you, then?”

“Uh huh,” he laughs, “With Daddy and Tuck.”

“What did you do there?”

The dish towel gets looped back over its hook, and she helps Roland off the stepstool, listening as he tells her about running, and about monkey bars, and about Tuck, and about the merry-go-round. She’s in the process of guiding him toward the bowl of cookie dough on the countertop when the whole room does a sort of slow, sloshing spin, and okay, maybe the cookies can wait. She exhales slowly, waits for the world to right itself again.

She doesn’t realize that she’s settled a hand heavily on Roland’s shoulder, gripping there to steady herself, until she hears him say her name, his little voice all sweet concern.

“I’m okay, baby,” she murmurs, releasing his shoulder and patting it gently, forcing a reassuring smile. “Sorry.” That was… unpleasant. “Y’know what, Roland, I think we should get dinner started before we work on the cookies some more; how does that sound?”

“Okay,” he shrugs, easy as pie. “What’s for dinner?”

She settles on chicken breasts – something easy, fast and bland. But fast is relative. It’s as if her body has suddenly decided enough is enough, and she finds herself with shaky fingers and a low-grade anxiety murmuring how much she will scar this child if she passes out on him (she can usually handle hunger better than this; it must be the last dregs of food poisoning working their way through her system). She needs something now, something fast.

There’s a half-eaten carton of strawberries in the fridge, so she grabs that, too, and some spinach that’s nearly past its prime. A whole salad sounds a bit much, but she thinks she has some slivered almonds in the pantry, and her stomach should be able to handle some greens with olive oil and lemon, a little fruit, and some chicken. 

“Why don’t you sit at the table, honey,” she encourages Roland, giving the strawberries a rinse and immediately plucking one from the carton, biting off half of it. The berry is cold against her teeth, but the sweet-tart taste of it blooms across her tongue and suddenly she's ravenous. She finishes the first strawberry, then chows down two more in short order, keeping her back to Roland and dropping the stems into the disposal. That should be enough to tide her over while the chicken cooks, and the timer has just beeped for the first batch of cookies, so she gives the carton of berries a little shake to rid the excess water. 

“Can I have one?” Roland asks, so she drops the berries in front of him before moving to silence the timer and free the cookies. It occurs to her as she pulls them out, golden brown and just starting to crisp around the edges, that Roland had probably been talking about  _ these  _ and not the strawberries. But as she turns to move them from pan to cooling rack she spies him happily munching a berry anyway. 

“Are they hot?” he asks her, his words a little garbled around a fruity mouthful. 

“They are,” she confirms. “We'll have one in a little while, okay?”

Roland  _ Mmhmm _ s as she makes quick work of the cookies, that vague unsettling dizziness hovering around the back of her skull. After depositing the baking sheet on one half of the stove, she grabs a pan and places it on a free burner, setting it to heat before turning for the fridge. 

Roland is asking if he can help her cook, so after grabbing the packet of chicken, she digs up her small cutting board and grabs a plastic knife from the box in the cupboard. 

“You can cut the tops off the strawberries, how's that?” she offers, and he lights up at being given such a grown-up sounding task. It's needless busy work and something where he's unlikely to burn or cut himself (unlikely to cut much of anything with that knife, but it'll make him feel like he's helping). 

Roland sets determinedly to his task, tongue between his teeth (so much like his father sometimes) as he concentrates on sawing off the very top of a strawberry. Or the top third, it looks like, but a little waste never hurt anyone. 

Regina focuses on her chicken, her hand shaking as she pours a little bit of oil into the pan; her stomach  _ hurts _ now. She drops both chicken breasts into the pan, realizing a moment too late that she's cooking for one, not her usual two, and that in her anxious hurry she hadn't even bothered to season them. She lets out a quiet groan of frustration, grasping the pepper mill next to the stove and giving it a few good cranks before flipping the breasts and doing the same to the other side before they cook any further. 

It'll be a little dull, but that's probably better for her stomach anyway, and an extra chicken breast ready-to-eat in the fridge won't hurt anything. For a minute there's silence, just the quiet plunk of Roland's knife hitting the cutting board and the soft sizzle of chicken cooking. 

God, she's hungry, so hungry…

“Am I doing good?” Roland asks. 

Regina keeps her gaze on her impending dinner and murmurs, “Wonderful, baby.”

He’s disgruntled as he points out she didn't even look, so she fights a sigh and walks back to the table. His cuts are all uneven, his strawberries more halved than trimmed and he has somehow managed to half-crush a few of them, strawberry juice all over his fingers. Thank God he's not wearing white. 

She smiles and leans in to drop a kiss to his head, repeating her earlier praise: “Wonderful.”

Roland beams and keeps up his task. Regina steals one of the meatier tops and nibbles at the ripe, red fruit left around the stem as she heads back for the stove, flipping the chicken breasts again. By the time the chicken is finished cooking, Roland has decimated most of the berries, so she takes the carton away from him - she probably should have stopped him sooner, there's no way she'll get through all of these. Maybe Henry will help her finish them when he gets home. 

She's fixing her little salad when Roland asks, “Can I have chicken too?”

“Daddy said you already ate,” she reminds as she drizzles a scant amount of olive oil over her little pile of spinach. 

When he tells her, “Yeah, but it smells good,” she figures what can it hurt? If anything, it'll leave less room in his belly for multiple cookies.  

“You can help with mine,” she says, grabbing an extra fork as she heads back to the table. Her anxiety had over-filled her plate, anyway – as hungry as she is, she should probably take it easy. So she cuts the chicken breast in thirds, cutting one of them into smaller cubes and slicing the other two for herself. 

Roland stabs one of the smaller pieces with his fork, and  _ Mmmm _ s his approval as he chews. She has to agree - it's probably just because she's hungry, because it's the first real meal she's had since Saturday, but the chicken is delicious. She has to fight to pace herself, to not inhale the whole plate so fast she makes herself sick all over again. 

She alternates – chews a slice of chicken breast, and then has a strawberry, finishes with a bit of greens. Makes sure she chews everything fully, sips at her glass of iced seltzer between each piece. 

Roland imitates – eats chicken when she does, says, “Here, this one!” when she reaches for a strawberry, grabbing one for himself, too. He even makes those eyes – the pleading puppy ones – and begs a few pieces of spinach off her plate. He's too young to be babysitting her through a meal, she thinks, so she chalks it up to him missing her over the last few weeks. 

She's missed him, too – had loved spending time with a little boy again. He's different from Henry in personality, in temperament, but he has the same boundless curiosity, the same eagerness Henry had had at this age. She misses when he was little, aches with it sometimes. Right now. Right now, when she is baking cookies because he's surly, and obstinate, and all too aware of the goings-on of the adults around him. 

Roland makes a silly face at her, squishing half-chewed strawberry mush out through the gaps in his baby teeth and Regina grimaces and laughs. She'll take this for a little while, and gladly – a little goofball, a little break. She's glad Robin called, even if it has her saying, “Roland the food is supposed to be going further  _ into  _ your mouth, not coming back out.”

He just laughs, and chews, and she forks up another slice of chicken. 

Together, they manage to clear her plate, and then Roland rather predictably asks immediately for a cookie. And then a glass of milk to go with said cookie. 

The request has her chuckling, and asking, “Roland, have you ever read the book  _ If You Give A Mouse A Cookie _ ?”

He shakes his head, tells her, “Nuh uh. What’s it about?”

“Well,” she begins, rising and clearing her plate, then heading for the fridge as she talks, “It’s about a boy who gives his mouse friend a cookie. And the mouse asks for a glass of milk,” —she pulls the milk from the refrigerator, grabs a cup from the cupboard— “and then all sorts of wackiness ensues. It’s one of Henry’s favorites.”

“Can we read it?” he asks immediately, his face lighting up, and she cannot think of a single good reason why they shouldn’t – she can finish the cookies afterward. 

So she fills his cup, and then puts the bowl of cookie dough into the fridge when she returns the carton of milk, bringing him his cup and a single cookie as she tells him to sit tight and wait for her while she gets the book. 

It’s up in Henry’s room, on the bottom shelf now with all his other “kid books.” She grabs several – experience has taught her that one book is usually followed by a request for another. And then she returns to Roland, plates up two more cookies (he’s already crumby from the first one, and he probably shouldn’t have three, but, well, she’s feeling a little better. Maybe she’ll finish the third one herself), and grabs a straw for his milk from the pantry.

Then she tells him, “Okay, little mouse, it’s story time,” and ushers him into the living room.

They curl up together in one of the armchairs, Roland on her lap, their books, cookies, and milk carefully deposited on the table just within reach, and then she cracks open the story. Roland munches cookie number two as she begins, “ _ If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to ask for a glass of milk _ ...” 

Roland giggles, and says, “Like me!” and Regina hums and agrees,  _ Just like you, _ before she continues reading. It’s not a very long book, but she’s always made a habit of taking her time when she reads to little boys. Henry had loved this book, and so had she, so she doesn’t rush, spends a little time on each page exploring the pictures with Roland. He wriggles a little on her lap, shifting until he’s cuddled against her shoulder, chewing his cookie slowly and no doubt depositing crumbs in both their laps. But he’s so sweet, and it’s been so long since she’s had a good cuddle, that Regina just can’t find it in herself to care. Errant crumbs are what vacuums are for. 

Sure enough, when she gets to the end of the book, he wants to keep reading. But he wants  _ this _ book again, tells her it’s his most favoritest book, and well, they can’t not read it again after that high praise, now can they?

So they go through the whole thing one more time (she lets him have that third cookie after all, because he “needs a cookie to go with the book!” and because she’s a sucker), but as they near the end of the book, she notices that Roland has gone conspicuously quiet. She pauses in her reading, waits for him to tell her to keep going, but he doesn’t, and the last quarter of that cookie is held loosely in his little fist. He’s out.

It’s about that time, she supposes. Henry’s lesson was supposed to be at seven, it’s already well after eight, and he’s not even four yet. She should’ve seen this coming. 

Not that she minds – she doesn’t, not one bit. She’s tired herself, and the idea of just sitting here for a while, letting him snooze while they wait on his father, her son, well… it sounds like a fine plan.

She sets the book aside as gingerly as she can, then eases that last bit of cookie from his little paw, popping it into her mouth. He’s had plenty, her dinner is sitting well enough, and while crumbs are what vacuums are for, she doesn’t really relish the idea of  _ that _ much cookie ending up ground into the upholstery. She chews slowly, savors the sweetness, and then she just… sits. Rubs his back lightly, rests her head against the tall back of the chair. 

She doesn’t realize she’s fallen asleep until she’s being woken by the front door opening, Henry and Robin’s voices and footfalls sounding in the foyer before dropping suddenly to a hushed volume. She blinks heavily, momentarily disoriented, bringing a hand to cup lightly at the back of Roland’s skull as she lifts her head and tries to rouse herself into wakefulness.

Robin is standing in the door between living room and entry, smiling, and she has a moment to think how beautiful he is, how much she loves that smile, before her brain catches up and reminds her she shouldn’t think like that about him.

“Cookies?” Henry stage whispers, ducking into view. 

Regina smiles and whispers, “Kitchen,” and he’s off as quickly as he can manage while still staying quiet. 

Robin crosses the few feet between them, still smiling fondly at his son dead asleep on her lap. “Marian’s here,” he tells her softly. “Looks like he wore you out.” 

“This day wore me out,” she tells him with a little exhausted eye roll. “He was a little peach.”

Robin chuckles softly, then reaches for his son, and together they ease Roland oh-so-carefully into Robin’s arms, Regina asking as they do, “Did you still want cookies?”

The grin Robin gives her is guilty and boyish, and then he’s holding his son against his torso, cradling him there and shushing him gently when Roland scowls and stirs. Nothing boyish about him now; he’s all man, all loving father, and something in Regina’s middle aches with longing.    
  
She was right to ask him for space.

“I’ll come back for them after I get him in the car?” he suggests, and Regina nods, tells him that’s perfect. 

It gives her just enough time to get half a batch of cookies into a Tupperware for him. When he returns to retrieve them, she shrugs off his gratitude for letting him impose on her evening, tells him it was nothing, that Roland is always welcome here. 

And then she tells him goodnight.

**.::.**

****  
  


On Friday, she decides she can’t put this date with Sidney off any longer. Tuesday, she’d still been babying her stomach – had stuck to a coconut milk yogurt with a scant sprinkling of granola for breakfast, and then that leftover chicken breast with some greens for lunch. Had made veggie stirfry and rice for Henry for dinner and eaten cautiously until she was just barely full. But she’d felt better Wednesday, had finally felt normal, and had forced herself to push just a little. A bagel with cream cheese halfway through the morning, and when that sat well, a chicken Caesar for lunch, and pork chops for dinner. 

And Sidney keeps giving her that look, the anxious and hopeful one. So she pokes her head into his office around three o’clock and proposes, “The Magic Bean. Tonight, after work? For that rain check.”

He seems to startle a little, sits up straighter and grins, and agrees without missing a beat, “Of course. Whatever you want – of course. That’s perfect.”

He finishes his work a full thirty minutes before she does, and is stuck waiting around for her until she finally shuts down her computer at quarter past six. He offers to drive, but she argues it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense – having to come back here to the office at the end of the night to get to her car – so they drive separately, manage to find two parking spots next to each other, and are sitting at a little table for two, a beer in front of Sidney and a seltzer with lime for Regina, by seven o’clock. 

This is… better. Comfortable – or at least familiar. He’ll get the black bean burger again, usually does, but she likes to browse. So she studies the menu while Sidney studies her, something she is acutely aware of. He does this, she remembers. She knows this. He likes to look at her, likes to watch her, and when it makes her feel a subtle sheen of unease, she reminds herself that this is a date. This is not a working lunch. This is not their usual midday meal to talk shop.

But she can’t seem to shake it, that feeling of wrongness. Not when they order (there’s a kale and citrus salad on special tonight, so she orders that), not while they wait for their food to arrive and fill the space with small talk. He asks how Henry had managed when she was ill, if she’d had to pull double duty as both Mom and patient, grimacing sympathetically as he does, and she tells him that, no, thankfully the neighbor had taken pity on her and taken Henry for a sleepover and zoo trip with his son. 

“So you had the day to yourself,” he says with a little smile, and why does he do that? Smile like that. He does it a lot, that little… smirking smile. It’s not the way he smiles when he’s genuinely happy with something – it’s tense, like it’s forced. It’s the same smile he used to wear when Graham would stop by, she remembers with a sudden flash of clarity. Her stomach pinches, and this time she cannot blame impending food poisoning. 

She fiddles with the wrapper of her straw, and nods, says, “Yes. That part was nice – time alone is hard to come by as a single mom. I’d have preferred it without the vomiting and dizzy spells, but…” She’s trying for flirtatious, gives him a little smile of her own, and finishes, “I got to sleep in, watch a few movies that I wouldn’t share with my son, and let someone else handle lunch and dinner. Took a nice, long nap, and only got disturbed twice all day. It was almost like a little vacation.” (Not entirely true, but everyone lies a little bit on dates, right?)

Sidney chuckles at that, says, “Well, let me know the next time you need a break – I’ll do my best to make you sick.”

She laughs softly in response, swirls her straw through her drink, ice clinking against the edges of the glass. “I think maybe next time I’ll just book a spa day,” she teases, and when he smiles at her this time, it’s real.

“Fair enough,” he agrees, and it gets marginally easier after that. There are a few stretches of silence that border on awkward, and she’s both grateful she ordered something that requires a lot of chewing, because it gives her time to think of something to talk about next, and frustrated by the same, because he doesn’t have nearly as difficult of a time bringing up topics of conversation – as long as those topics are about her. Not the worst thing to talk about – at least she’s well-versed in the subject – but it makes everything feel a little one-sided, and there a moments where she feels more like she’s being interviewed than dated. 

Twice she brings up work, and he shakes his head, says they can talk about that tomorrow at the office, this is personal time, he wants to talk about her. About them. 

“Right,” she gives herself a little shake and apologizes, “Maybe this wasn’t the best venue. I keep forgetting we’re on a date.” His face falls immediately, and she realizes how terrible that sounded, rushes to correct, “I mean – I don’t mean – I’m having a wonderful time. I think I just have a somewhat Pavlovian response to Magic Bean kale salads and status meetings. That’s all. I’m used to brainstorming here, not socializing.”

Sidney’s hand stretches across the table, his fingers weaving with hers, as he says, “Then I guess I’ll have to try a little harder to keep your mind occupied.”

Try as he might, by the end of the night, Regina finds herself walking beside Sidney as they head back to their cars and thinking that their evening had been only so-so. 

Which leaves her in a bit of a bind, to be honest.

There’s a moment at the end of every date – the will-we-or-won’t-we moment, heavy with tension. After the best of dates, it’s a snapping, electric sort of anticipation; after the not-so-great ones, an anxious sort of dread. Do you let him kiss or not? Will it be terrible, or surprisingly pleasant?

Tonight has not been a great date. It hasn’t been  _ terrible _ , but she’s acutely aware of how differently she feels with Sidney than she did with Robin. She’d been buzzing with  _ want _ at the end of her date with Robin, as she’d sat in his car and waited for that invitation inside. And now she’s at another car, standing between Sidney’s and her own, and feeling tension that is decidedly on the dreadful side of things. (Stop comparing, she tells herself. It doesn’t help.) 

They’re at her driver’s side door, Sidney has walked her all the way there, and now he’s looking at her that way. The good-anticipation way, his eyes bright, his tongue peeking out to wet his lips as his gaze flicks to her mouth, and there is no food poisoning to give her an out this time. He takes another step closer, his hand rising, skimming up her bare arm, his finger catches slightly at her sleeve and almost tugs before his hand is at the back of her neck, his head tipping in closer, and shit, there is no polite way out of this. She sucks in a breath to say something, anything, her lips parting, but his mouth is on hers before she can find the words.

It’s a little awkward (there’s open-mouthed kissing, and then there’s kissing someone who just opened their mouth and this is definitely the latter), his hand clammy as usual against her neck, still cool from the restaurant’s air conditioning even though the night is warm and muggy. Regina tilts her head just so and it becomes a little… less… awkward. He’s not a terrible kisser – not a great kisser, either… And then there’s tongue – a little too much tongue, but Regina opens for him on instinct despite the anxious twist in her belly.

She shouldn’t be kissing him. This is all wrong.

Sidney moans softly into the kiss and moves a step closer, backing Regina into the door of her car, the hand not at her neck grasping at her hip and holding tight. She’s trapped between him and the car, not quite pinned, but he’s pressed to the front of her, and she realizes with another twist of anxiety that he’s hard. Can feel him against her as his kisses grow more and more aggressive, and this isn’t what she wants. Certainly not here – although better here than in private. But still. 

She tips her head down, out of the kiss, and before he can dive back in breathes, “I need to get back to Henry.”

He pauses, his mouth a scant centimeter from hers, and says, “Oh,” and then presses his lips firmly to hers one more time before pulling back. Well, at least he listens to the word ‘no.’ His hand runs up her side and back down, the other tracing through her hair, and he smiles at her. “Are you sure you can’t spend a little more time?”

“I’m sorry,” she grimaces. “But I’ve left him to the neighbor’s good graces long enough. I should get back home. But thank you – for tonight.”

“It was my pleasure,” he tells her, full of sincerity, but a dark, sarcastic part of her mutters internally  _ I know, I could feel it _ … and it hits her like a ton of bricks: This whole thing was a mistake. She doesn’t want Sidney; she never wanted Sidney. This can’t happen again – it shouldn’t even be happening now. 

But she doesn’t want to cause a scene, not here. Doesn’t really want to crush his heart – and Mal’s right, it will.

So she smiles and says, “I’ll see you Monday.”

Sidney nods, tells her, “Bright and early,” and then leans in for one more kiss – a quick one, just a peck, but she wasn’t expecting it, and it takes her a moment to react, her lips pursing as he’s pulling back. He takes it as invitation for one more, and then finally steps back, grinning and telling her goodnight as he reaches for her car door.

It’s still locked, and she has to fish out her keys from her purse, an awkwardness she’s fairly certain only she feels spreading between them as she gropes along the bottom of her bag until she feels metal against her fingertips. 

She gives him one more smile – one she can  _ feel _ is not sincere, but he remains somehow oblivious to that fact – and then shuts herself safely in her car.

  
Her belly is a nervous wreck, jittery and slithering, that salad threatening to make its way back up as she buckles and turns the key, doesn’t even bother with the radio before she’s backing out. 

She makes the drive home in silence, aside from her occasionally hissed profanities. This was stupid. This was a terrible idea. How could she have thought that Sidney –  _ Sidney _ – of all people was the right choice for a rebound. She works with him, she has to see him every day, she has never been interested in him romantically  _ in the slightest _ in the last five years, how did she  _ think _ this was going to end?

Truth be told, she hadn’t. She hadn’t thought about it, she had just told herself to do whatever she needed to get over Robin. Stupid, thieving, gorgeous, attentive Robin. She wants to blame him for this, for pushing her toward this mess, but it’s not his fault, not really. She made the dumb decision, not him.

And now she’s stuck with it. Stuck with having to find a way to gently tell Sidney that she doesn’t think they should see each other again without jeopardizing their working relationship in the process.

Maybe that can be her excuse. Work. She can tell him she’s reconsidered her policy on dating coworkers and wants to stick with the one she’d had before: hell no. Maybe that would be… acceptable. Not too damaging. They can both save face…

Shit. This was a terrible idea.

And the worst part is that somewhere, deep down, she thinks she’s probably always known that. It’s certainly never felt  _ right _ , she’s had reservations from the very start – God, how could she have been this stupid? It’s like a fog has lifted, like the moment Sidney’s lips touched hers, she saw the whole thing in clear, stark relief. 

She’s two miles from home when she feels the clawing scramble of true anxiety up her sternum – frankly, she’s surprised it didn’t hit her sooner. But it hits and hits hard – she is fucked. She has done an incredibly stupid thing – and dug her heels in on it, did it not once but twice, despite the warnings of cooler heads around her, and she sees herself suddenly as if from the outside, the last few weeks of her life, the moping and the melancholy and the magnetic pull of Robin, Robin, Robin, even though they were nothing. They were not anything. (No matter how many times she tells herself that, it is never true.)

Her fingers are shaking, so she white knuckles the wheel, tries to focus on the road and not the way her breath is hitching, the bloom of sweat on her skin. Not on the memory of Sidney pressed against her, getting what he has always wanted, the chance to wine and dine her, to kiss her, to put his hands on her. 

She has a sudden memory of being sixteen, of Mother picking and picking, ripping her apart, until she felt useless and stupid and like she was drowning, grasping at anything to hold herself together, and she remembers diligently weighing, and diligently dieting, and diligently starving, and diligently retching up birthday cake after someone’s Sweet Sixteen, and she has done so well this summer, despite everything, despite Robin, despite her utter inability to shape her life to her will, she has done so well, she has stayed so healthy, but she is three blocks from home, and her dinner feels heavy in her stomach, she is nauseous and anxious and—

Shit. 

_ Shit,  _ shit, shit.

Stop this, she needs to stop this, she needs to rein it the fuck in. It was one bad date (two bad dates), one bad decision (so many bad decisions), it was not the end of the world (God, what if he takes this poorly?). 

She’d been desperate for home twenty minutes ago, but when she pulls in behind her house, it feels too soon. Henry is at home, she knows that, she can see his light on, but she is a wreck right now. Not steady, not calm, not Mom. She doesn’t want to go inside like this, can’t, not until she can breathe normally again, not until he won’t notice that she feels like she’s cracking apart all of a sudden. So she doesn’t open the garage, doesn’t alert him to her presence.

Just puts the car in park and takes a minute to breathe. Drops her face into her hands and takes deep breaths, and tells herself it’s going to be fine, it’s all going to be fine. Sidney is reasonable, he will understand. It will be okay. 

She swallows against the tension in her throat, and imagines the salad piece by healthy piece. Kale (can’t go wrong), and avocado (healthy fats, and delicious at that), and thin wedges of grapefruit (juicy and sweet-tart and full of vitamin C), and feta (it’s okay, it’s still healthy, it’s just feta, she  _ likes _ feta), that very light vinaigrette. Seltzer. Lime. It was a perfect meal. A delicious meal. A healthy meal.

  
It will all be okay. 

She breathes, and she breathes, and her throat begins to loosen, and that anxious rising of her dinner begins to sink back down. It will all be okay.

It takes a minute, but she calms herself enough that she doesn’t think Henry will be able to tell the difference, and then she parks the car properly and heads inside. 

She calls out his name as she walks swiftly from back door to front, punching in the code for the alarm when she gets there. He doesn’t answer, and there’s a post-it note stuck to the wall next to the console, Henry’s handwriting scribbled across it to tell her that he’s at Robin’s. 

Well. Great. 

Granny Lucas was supposed to be watching him here, but Regina supposes she shouldn’t be surprised that he ended up next door. Par for the course lately, it seems. Still, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Her fingers are still a little shaky, and she’s glad to have another few minutes to settle herself without having to deal with being Mom. Maybe she’ll take a shower, get herself out of this dress, these heels. 

Yes. Yes, she’ll do that. She’ll feel better if she has a few minutes under the spray to clear her thoughts, to wash away any lingering trace of Sidney’s cologne. So she climbs the stairs, and strips down to her skin, leaving her dress puddled on the bathroom floor as she cranks the water on hot.

It sluices over her skin, prickles hot along her scalp when she steps into the spray face-first, telling herself it will wash everything away. It doesn’t really work. Her mind is still racing, starting to rehearse the words she will need to tell Sidney this was all a big mistake, imaging his face, the disappointment, the awkwardness of the status meeting they’re supposed to have at 11am Monday morning, oh God, this is… This was a bad idea.

She can't do anything about it today, not from here, not unless she wants to dump him via phone and she thinks after five years of pining he deserves better than that. So she can't do anything today, not until Monday, and she focuses on that, tips her face out of the spray and blinks heavily, mascara stinging at her eyes. She needs to put Sidney out of her mind, so she pays more attention than necessary to washing the makeup off her face, takes in the scent of her face wash, focuses on the smoothness of her skin, the bump of a small blemish on her right cheek, the heat of the water as she rinses. 

She chooses the lavender bar soap because it is soothing, notes the feel of it slipping over arms and breasts and belly, rolls it along her neck, using the bumpy surface of one side to massage tense muscles there. Runs soapy fingers quickly through the warmth between her thighs. 

Thank God she hadn't let him get  _ that _ far. 

She blinks, shakes her head, tries not to think of Sidney’s erection pressed against her. 

Lavender soap. Warm water. The silky creaminess of her shave gel as she lathers up her right leg. Long, straight lines of smooth skin up her shin, over her calf, strip by strip. The same on the other leg, skimming her thighs bare.

She doesn't wash her hair, just washed it this morning, but she lets the water run, massages her scalp and breathes slowly. 

When she emerges from the shower, she feels nearly normal again, a tiny kernel of unease beneath her breastbone all that's left of her jumpy nerves. 

The house is still quiet, Henry still out, and usually the silence is something she enjoys, but there's that tiny kernel, that thin edge of anxiety, persistent even once she's toweled dry. Bearable, but still there. It makes the silence seem vast and heavy. Uncomfortable. Makes her want to fill it. Maybe she'll run – put her headphones on and hit the treadmill for an hour, burn off that salad— No. No. 

Kale. Citrus. Vinaigrette. Seltzer. Lime. 

Nothing to work off. 

She shouldn't run tonight. She'll run too hard. She’ll push. She needs something to shift her focus, that’s all. Needs to not be alone.

Henry. 

She should go get Henry from Robin's. It's still relatively early, but realistically he won't be ready to go the minute she comes calling – and he should have a shower before bed, too, come to think of it. 

So she tugs on a pair of leggings and a tank top, pulls Daniel’s old sweatshirt over the top despite the warmth of the night, and slips into the flip flops she keeps on the mat in the foyer before grabbing her keys and heading next door. 

She raps her knuckles against their front door twice – she's not sure what time Roland goes down and doesn't want to risk waking him with the bell. Robin appears a minute later, video game controller in hand, and sheepish smile on his face. 

“Come to collect, I'd imagine?” he asks, and then off her nod, “Roland wanted to play, after missing out the other night. Henry was kind enough to oblige. I hope you don't mind?”

“No, it's fine,” she tells him. “I told you, I like that he has you in his life.”

“We’re in the middle of a very heated racing circuit – he's already crushed me twice and I'm attempting to regain my dignity,” Robin explains, his mouth doing that little sideways smirk she always found so attractive.

He looks good tonight, in just a t-shirt and shorts, but the shirt is a blue that makes his eyes pop, and, well, maybe her encounter with Sidney has made her more appreciative of all the finer points of Robin she's been trying so hard to put out of her mind. So when he asks if she minds if he sends Henry home when they're done, she should probably not shrug and say, “You could. Or I could come watch him kick your ass.”

But she does say it, and he grins, stepping back and inviting her in with a wide sweep of his arm. 

**.::.**

Something’s up with her. 

There’s an air about her, an aura of unease, not to mention that she’s shown up at his doorstep looking like she’s ready to tuck in for the night. In loungewear, and with not a drop of makeup to mask her busy thoughts – and they are busy. Distracting even him, as she curls into the armchair next to his sofa and watches them play. She’s chewing on her thumbnail, and then frowning and smoothing it over the material covering her knee, her fingers fidgeting, then stilling, closing into a fist.

That thumbnail is back in her mouth a few minutes later.

Robin itches to comfort, wishes he could tell Henry to run along home and let him talk to his mum for a bit (he'd do it, too, Henry. Robin knows he would. The boy would fall all over himself for a chance to leave the two of them alone together). But it’s not what  _ she _ wants, or at least not what she’s said she wants – but she’s here, isn’t she? Had practically invited herself in, even after all her declarations of having him in her life being far too much.

Robin would lament all this maddening back-and-forth if the end result of it wasn’t more time spent with her. 

But something is definitely up with her tonight, and he can’t help but wonder, and wish she’d grant him the time and the trust to be a comforting ear.

She won’t, and he won’t ask her to, doesn’t have that right, but he wishes all the same. Wishes, and wonders, and loses miserably to Henry once again, Regina’s warm chuckle drawing a smile out of him even as she taunts, “So much for your dignity.”

Henry laughs too, and Robin lets out a long-suffering sigh, overly dramatic, before he proposes, “Best out of seven, then?”

“You’d have to win four in a row!” Henry says, like he doesn’t think that’s likely (it’s not, if history proves, but it would keep them here a bit longer. 

“If we’re going to do that, I need something to drink,” Regina declares. “I’m parched.”

Robin jumps at the excuse to trail her into the kitchen, feeble as it is, telling Henry he’ll get him another Coke while he picks the cars for this next round. Regina raises a brow at that, her gaze sliding to the small collection of empty cans on the table as she asks how many Cokes he’s already had. Robin amends that he will bring him water. 

When they get to the kitchen, Regina opens the fridge and stares. 

“We’ve options today,” he tells her, knowing they don’t always. But he’d gone to the store this week, so there’s, “Coke, and juice, and milk, and beer.”

Her face shifts at that, mouth dropping open as if to make a request, and then snapping shut, her brow pinching. She stares hard into the fridge and he sees that unease on her face again, watches her purse her lips and swallow thickly.

She wants the beer, he thinks. Wants it, but won’t let herself have it. His gaze swoops down her body, takes in the snug fit of her leggings, and he wonders how long she spent running on that treadmill of hers before she came here tonight. She’s freshly showered, he thinks, smells like lavender and her hair is damp. How long did she spend trying to pound out whatever is troubling her before she decided to come here? What does she need from him? Or did she honestly just come to pick up Henry, and he ought to stop assuming she wants anything from him at all. 

Whether she wants it or not, though, he’ll give it. Some measure of comfort, whatever he can manage, because she’s still staring, considering, her teeth digging into her bottom lip, caught in an internal debate over what to drink of all things. So Robin takes a step closer, dares to touch her, a hand on her arm as he says, “I think I’ll go for a beer, if you don’t mind?”

She startles a little, steps back so she’s no longer blocking the fridge door, and says, “Yeah, of course. Whatever you want.”

“I try not to drink when I have the kids – when I have Roland – but one beer never hurt anyone, right?” She nods, seems distracted, anxious still, and something in the middle of his chest clenches for her. “Will you have one with me? So I’m not the deadbeat dad, drinking alone after bedtime?” He grabs two from the shelf, holds one out for her, and she stares at it, her brow knit. He cannot help himself, cannot keep from dropping his voice low, so it’s just between them and murmuring, “You’re gorgeous.” Her gaze flicks to his, and sharpens. “Whatever’s in your head tonight, one beer won’t hurt. Have what you want.”

Regina stiffens, squirms a little on the spot and winces, “Am I that transparent?”

“I know you,” he tells her simply, and then, “What do you need?”

She takes a deep breath in, lets it out, tells him, “Company,” and finally reaches for that beer, drawing it in close, and wringing both hands around it. “And maybe a beer.”

Robin smiles. It’s a small victory, but he’ll take any victory he can get when it comes to her. 

“Are the games alright?” he asks quietly as he grabs the bottle opener from where it’s stuck to the fridge door. “Would you rather something else?”

“No, they’re good,” she assures. “I like watching you two.” Then she flicks one brow up and adds, “But you need to up your game, Locksley.”

Robin chuckles, pops the top of her beer and his own, and nods, telling her, “I’ll win the next one for you.”

“If you lose, you’re weeding my garden for the rest of the summer,” she challenges, and now it’s Robin’s brows lifting, both of them, amused and impressed.

“Oh, we’re a betting woman now, are we?”

Regina shrugs, takes a sip of that beer and says, “We’re incentivizing. Besides, now I have a stake in who wins. Better distraction.” She winks, and then heads back to the living room, leaving Robin to belatedly remember that water he’d promised Henry. 

**.::.**

****  
  


She’ll say one thing for Robin and John: they have good taste in beer. She can't remember the last time she had one, it seems like forever, weeks, and she sips it slowly, intentionally, wishes she wasn’t so easy to read. He knew something was bothering her from two feet away, even knew what it was, and Sidney couldn’t figure out she was uncomfortable with his mouth mashed against hers – she shouldn’t compare, it’s dangerous. Before it was simply unfair (should have been a big, red, flashing WARNING sign that what she was doing was wrong), but now it’s reckless. Thinking of all the ways Robin is better when she cannot have him anyway. It won’t lead anywhere good, but it feels… better. Comforting. Robin is comforting. 

He cracks his neck, and then his knuckles, sips his beer and picks up the game controller. “Alright, young man, let’s get you good and properly trounced,” he declares, and then they’re at it again. 

Regina watches them play and tries not to think too much. Her therapist had told her once to try to be present when she was in the thick of a spell like this, to try to focus on the right now, and not the looming threats down the line. To focus on the needs of her mind and her body in that moment, rather than getting caught up in turning calories to pounds or fretting over what Mother might think or say. And this is anxiety, pure and simple, this isn’t rational, this is just… Just a reaction. To stress. To impending stress. But her body will not be helped by the things she cannot change right now, her mind will not be soothed by them; they are Monday’s problem. 

So she watches them play, watches how serious Henry’s face is as he concentrates, a look of fierce determination as he squints and lists side to side every time he takes his car around a turn. Watches the way Robin pokes his tongue between his teeth, the little scrunch of his nose and soft growl in his throat as he takes a bad corner. She sips her beer slowly, and thinks of every good thing about it. The welcome coolness (it’s not warm in here, not really, but she’s overdressed), the pleasantly bitter taste, the… Robin has nice arms. 

They’re bare in his short sleeves, and she finds herself staring at them, watching the slight shift of muscle and tendon beneath the skin as he works his controller. She thinks he’s been working out in his spare time, maybe, knows that he runs sometimes, but his arms seem more defined. Stronger. What does he do all day, she wonders. Plays his guitar, maybe. Maybe he’s writing music again. She hopes so, but then she thinks he might be writing about her and she’s… not sure how she feels about that. Not sure if this is at all a good train of thought – being present is all well and good but not so much when it has her itching to touch the smooth skin of his forearm, the tattoo there jumping a little bit as he maneuvers frantically for a moment. She’s always meant to ask him about it – the tattoo – when he got it, and why. It’s a lion crest, which seems very British, but surely there’s a reason more than that. Maybe she’ll ask him tonight, later, after he’s won this match for her. 

He’s winning right now, but not by much, Henry’s just behind him – something they’re both well aware of if the tension in the room is any indication. Henry is scowling deeply, leaning forward and he tries to regain his lead; Robin’s teeth are clamped on his bottom lip now. 

She thinks of kissing him, kissing that lip, realizes with a little punch of nerves that she really, really wants to. Maybe it’s the residual discomfort of her kiss with Sidney (it’s not, she always wants to kiss that stupid lip, both those stupid lips), but for a moment she can’t help imagine – remember – what it’s like to kiss Robin. To be kissed by him. The little flutter of anticipation in her chest, in her belly, the way his tongue teases, the taste of him, the soft scrape of his teeth along  _ her  _ lower lip. 

“Damnit!” he hisses as he flubs a turn, and it snaps her out of her reverie, pulls her from thoughts of his hand on her waist, clutching but not holding (Sidney had held, had pressed her hip back into the side of her car like an anchor). She shouldn’t be thinking about this right now. Or ever. Not here, not with him here, not with Henry here.

God, what is she going to say to Sidney? No, she knows what. She’s going to tell him they’re better off as colleagues, she’s already decided this. But it’s going to be awkward, terribly so, he’s been hung up on her for  _ years _ , she should never have opened this door knowing she was just going to have to shut it in his face again eventually. She should never have tried to convince herself that she could have anything more with him, anything substantial with him, just because he was there and available. By that logic, she should have just had a fling with Mal. (Oh God, she should have just had a fling with Mal – she’s not really interested in women, but then, she’s not really interested in Sidney either, and yet here she is stuck dealing with the aftermath of kissing him – at least Mal wouldn’t have gotten attached. This is crazy. What is she thinking? Why is she thinking this?) 

Her chest starts to feel tight again, anxiety curling up and making her fidget, her knees drawing up into her seat again. She takes another sip of her beer, and it tastes sour, too bitter, she should not be having beer it is not a good food, it is not a safe food, it is empty calories and gas, and—  No, stop it. Stop that.

God, she wishes she could just send Henry home. Send Henry home, and have a small meltdown right here on Robin’s armchair. He would let her – he has before – he would just – would just – she just wants him to – she wants someone to – wants someone— 

“YES!” Henry erupts, Regina startling as he hops up and does a little victory boogie while Robin lets out a frustrated groan of defeat.

“How did you get so bloody good at this game?” he asks suspiciously, but Regina glances to his face now and notices the way he’s looking at  _ her _ . He’s talking to Henry, sure, but his gaze keeps flicking over, barely veiled concern there, and  _ shit _ . She distracted him, she just knows it. She’s distracting him just by sitting here, she should go and— No. Stop that. 

She takes a deep breath in as Henry reminds that Robin had taught him all his tricks, and something about the student surpassing the Master (where does he get these things, he’s only ten – almost eleven now). And then she adds her own sass to the mix, plastering on a smile and taunting, “My knees will be so grateful. You can come by tomorrow for a lesson in what’s a weed and what’s a flower.”

“I think I know the difference,” Robin teases back, tossing his controller onto the coffee table. “And I give up. Henry, you win – you’re on a lucky streak, or you’ve learned to cheat, but you win.”

Henry lets out the closest thing to an evil cackle she’s ever heard from him, and it breaks through a little bit of her dark cloud – she is so grateful for him, so, so grateful. But then his face falls and he asks, “Wait, does that mean we have to go home now?”

Regina’s stomach twists. They should, they absolutely should, but she feels all off-kilter again, and it will be just her and Henry, and he will know, he will figure out that something is wrong, something is off. And she can add shame to the miasma of emotion she’s currently being choked by. 

Robin has opened his mouth to answer, his gaze on her but carefully blank. “It’s getting a bit late, but…”

“If you need to get to sleep,” Regina begins, “we wouldn’t want to impose.”

“I’ll be up a while longer,” he dismisses, and then, “But I’d never dream of keeping you from your beauty rest.” He smiles at her, and she feels her lips curve in answer. 

“I still have half this beer left,” she tells him with a little shrug, and Robin nods, says  _ That settles it, then _ , and tells Henry to go pick a movie from the shelf. Something short, so they don’t keep his mum up too late. 

“Is it alright if I join you guys over there?” Regina asks, “Now that I’m not at risk of getting beaned in the head by a rogue controller.”

Robin chuckles and tells her of course it’s alright, shifting a bit more onto the middle cushion as Henry pops the DVD in. So she shifts to the sofa – another dumb choice made for stupid reasons (she wants to be closer, just wants to be closer, just a little bit, nothing bad, nothing that will hurt them in the end, nothing that will start them down a road she’s told herself again and again they cannot travel, she just feels terrible, she’s stuck, she’s stuck in this, and goddamnit, she wants Robin, she wants her friend). She curls herself up there, too, props herself against the side cushion and lets her bare feet rest a few inches from his leg. His hand drops down a moment later, while Henry’s back is still turned (he’s fiddling with the remote now, getting them through the menu of one of the Harry Potter movies), and circles loosely around her ankle, giving it a little tug. She inches it another centimeter closer – permission – and lets him draw her feet toward him until they’re tucked against his thigh, Robin’s hand settling warm on her ankle, his thumb tracing the top of her foot. She could just about cry. 

“If I give you a foot rub for half the movie, will that get me out of gardening?” Robin asks, grinning at her, and Regina chokes a little laugh and rolls her eyes.

“Maybe it’ll get you out of the rest of July.”

Henry snickers at that, plopping down on Robin’s other side just as he draws her nearest foot into his lap and says, “I’ll take it.”

It’s an awkward angle, uncomfortable, and she has to rearrange a little and set her beer on the floor in front of them to keep it within reach, but they manage to find something a bit more workable, and then there are thumbs tracing along her arch, and she closes her eyes to the Hogwarts theme and just breathes. Focuses on his hands. Tries not to think. Tries not to feel anything else.

“Don’t fall asleep, okay, Mom?”

“I won’t,” she assures Henry. “Just listening for a little while.”

And listen she does, tries once again to silence her racing thoughts, tries once again to be present. Robin is rubbing one hand up and down her arch, has switched his other hand to her other foot and simply rested it there, curled his fingers around the sole, his thumb resting along her ankle. He is once again stupidly perceptive, it seems, because his “massage” is a little half-assed. It’s more soothing stroke than tension-reducing pressure, but she focuses on the feel of it, focuses on the comfort he is trying to give, focuses on the feel of his calluses on the soft skin inside her ankle, the tickling friction as his palm skims lightly up her calf and back down. 

She really hopes Henry isn’t watching this; it will only lead to more questions. 

Regina opens her eyes, cranes her neck a little to peer around Robin. Henry’s watching the movie. Good. 

Robin gives her ankle a small squeeze, drawing her gaze, and then he gives her a sympathetic little smile, and mouths  _ What can I do? _

Regina just presses her foot harder against his thigh. He gets the message though, gives her a little nod, and digs his fingers more firmly into her arches, works along her ankles, gives each of her toes a little tug in turn. One foot, and then the other, until the movie is half over, and Henry is sound asleep against the other side of the sofa. 

He’s managed to lull her a bit (and maybe the beer has helped with that, too, she’s been sipping at it every now and then, has managed to empty about two thirds of it), the steady touch helping to ease her anxiety down and down. She almost feels normal now. Almost feels sleepy. 

And then he’s squeezing her ankle again and jutting his chin toward the kitchen. Regina frowns and disentangles herself, pushing slowly to her pampered feet and padding toward the kitchen as Robin eases himself gingerly from the sofa, careful not to wake Henry.

He keeps his voice low, even when they’re once again next to the fridge, a good stretch of space between them and her sleeping son. 

“What’s wrong, babe?” he finally gets to ask her, stepping in close and reaching out for one of her hands. “What’s going on?”

Regina shakes her head, lets him play absently with her fingers and tells him, “Anxiety attack. I couldn’t shake it. Being alone wasn’t helping at all, so I thought if I came and got Henry, I’d have a distraction, but then…” She frowns, her gaze dropping to their hands, to the way he has hers wrapped in both of his and is rubbing gently. And because he is soothing, and he is kind, and he is Robin, she lets herself be vulnerable, just for a minute (she has been all night, she has been a ball of vulnerable nerves and he knows it), and admits, “I didn’t want him to see me weak. It was easier to stay; I could hide it better. I thought being around people might help.”

“You’re not weak,” he tells her firmly. “You’re keyed up, but that doesn’t make you weak. What did she do this time?”

Regina’s brow furrows. “Who?”

“Your mum.”

Oh. Of course. She’s a mess, she’s nervy over a beer, of course he thinks it’s Cora. For a second, she thinks about lying. It’d be a hell of a lot easier, a hell of a lot less embarrassing, to say that yes, her mother twisted her inside out again. She’d take that familiar punch to the ego any day over the mess she’s made for herself. 

He deserves better than that, though; he’s trying to be a friend. He doesn’t deserve lies, even if he is the one who dished them out in the first place. But she doesn’t want to tell him the truth, either, so she gives him something she can call a half-truth instead: “It’s not her this time; it’s a work thing. I just… I let it get the best of me today, that’s all. And then I got… stuck.”

He frowns. “Is everything alright? You didn’t – You’re not sacked or anything?”

“No,” she assures, shaking her head. “Nothing like that. And it’ll be okay.” She nods resolutely, and says again, “It will be,” convincing herself as much as him. “I just messed something up, and now I have to fix it, that’s all.”

She doesn’t want to think about this, about Sidney, about work. It has anxiety popping in her chest again and damnit, she just got rid of it.

  
“And when I get like this, everything just… compounds. It’s been a stressful few weeks, and I’ve been trying – I really have – to be healthy, but there was everything with you, and my mother trying to make amends, and work, and Sidney, and it’s all just…” She lifts the hand he’s not holding and presses it to her sternum, presses down on where she feels tight again. “I’m having a really bad night.”

And then he asks her, “Would it be alright if I hugged you?” and she blinks.

“What?”

“I know what we talked about, but you matter to me, Regina, and I feel utterly useless just standing here while you’re so clearly upset. So can I hug you, at least? Please?”

He’s looking at her with those eyes, all kind and imploring, and that blue she just wants to drown in, and suddenly there are hot tears prickling along her lashes. She blinks heavily (his hands squeeze more tightly around hers), glances toward the living room where Henry is still sound asleep and leads Robin in the other direction, toward the back hallway, telling him softly, “If he wakes up, I don’t want him to see and ask questions…”

Robin nods, and follows dutifully, but once they’re out of sight, he uses their joined hand to reel her in, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. Regina melts right into him, presses her face into his shoulder and breathes in the scent of soap, and light cologne, and Robin. This is what she’s wanted, all night. Just this, just a moment, just a moment with another person who understands her. He doesn’t have to know what’s wrong, she just needs a moment to be weak, and stupid, and held.

And he gives it to her. Keeps one arm looped across her, spanning shoulder-to-shoulder, and runs his other hand up and down her spine. “I’m sorry you’re having a shit night,” he murmurs, and then, “We’ll hug it out for a minute, alright? We’ll stand here as long as you need.” 

Regina manages a hollow chuckle – with the summer she’s had, they’ll still be standing here when the sun comes up. But she just nods, and breathes, and winds her arms around his middle. And then she whispers, “I’m sorry,” into his neck, and, “I know I said I wanted space, and I know it’s not fair that I’m here, but I just… I needed a friend. I wanted a friend, and—”

He shushes her, a soft, lingering,  _ shhh _ , as he begins to rock them gently back and forth, his chin settling onto her hair. “I’ve got your back, babe. Always. You know that. Even if you need space, even if you need time. I’m still here if you need me.”

She nods, nods again, presses her nose into the crook of his neck again, and drinks him in. She misses him, God, she misses him now. She wants him back in her life like this, all the time, every day, wants to have the damn relationship they both want, and she has half a mind to just call her fucking mother and ask. Just ask. Does she remember this man, this man who was in her house, and if not she will just date him already and get it over with because she cannot let this go. She has tried, and it made her stupid. It made her reckless, and dumb, and got her a mouth full of Sidney, and for a moment it seems worth it to just risk it all and ask. Just ask.

Because she deserves this, doesn’t she? A man who cares about her, a person in her life who is there for her, someone to be a support, a comfort – someone for her to support and comfort in turn? She deserves to have someone, and damnit, she wants that someone to be him. 

Of course, asking could damn him. Even if Mother doesn’t remember him, asking could plant the seed she needs to call him up from the depths of memory, and then he’d be destroyed. Totally destroyed. Mother would not leave him be, she would want to know why Regina had asked, she would snoop and pry and she would find out. She knows she would. It’s why they’re stuck like this. She doesn’t want to risk him, but she can’t seem to walk away and stay gone. 

She shouldn’t have come here tonight, shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be letting him hold her, shouldn’t be holding him in return. They cannot  _ have  _ this, it cannot go anywhere, she will not risk his safety just because she wants a friend, wants a lover, wants him.

She can’t. She won’t. That’s selfish. 

But she doesn’t let go.

**.::.**

This isn’t helping. Or maybe it is, but it’s hurting, too

She’d been relaxed, before, on the sofa. She had finally relaxed, and then he’d noticed Henry was fast asleep and he’d wanted to know. Wanted to help. But it seems all he’s done is remind her of what had her so upset in the first place, given her comfort that she seems to feel guilty for taking, and maybe he shouldn't. Maybe he ought not to, but she wants a friend, and he is that, he will be that. He will always be that for her, if she will let him. 

So he doesn’t let go, and he doesn’t ease her away from him. Just stands as he is, back to the wall of the hallway, and continues to hug it out with her. Settles the hand that had been rubbing her back into the dip at the base of her spine and just holds on for her. If she needs a friend, if she’d wanted a friend, he will damn well be one. Even if it makes his chest ache, even if the lavender scent of her hair drives him to distraction (he lifts the hand from her shoulder to comb his fingers through it), even if the way she fits just so against him like this, without her shoes on, makes him want to discover every other way they fit.

He will stand here, and he will be a friend.

Her breath is hitching lightly – he doesn’t think she’s crying, but she’s upset, he knows she is – so he asks, “Is there anything more I can do?”

She tips her head up then, and their eyes lock. Hers are bright, a little manic; she is once again surrounded by an aura of palpable anxiety, and then she looks at his lips, and swallows hard, and he watches emotion flicker through her eyes. Trepidation and vulnerability, and her tongue slips out and wets her lips, her hands fisting in the back of his shirt, and suddenly their faces are close, very close. He’s not sure if she moved, or if he did, or if they both did, but her breath is warm against his chin, her chest pressing into his with every quick breath she draws, and the air between them is charged and electric.

She breathes, “I’m sorry,” and he asks for what. “This,” she says, and then she’s kissing him.

Robin's heart kicks hard as Regina lifts up onto her tiptoes, a quiet moan in the back of her throat, her lips soft and warm and sweet against his. He drinks her in like a parched man, keeps that hand steady at her back and curls the fingers of the other until they're twined in her hair. He can feel her exhale against him, the wash of her breath against his cheek, and then her palms slide around and settle warm on his ribs. 

Her whole body loosens just a little, and she opens her mouth to him, lets his tongue sweep inside, the bitter taste of lager mixing with passion fruit lip balm, and things go very quickly from sweet to hot. He knows better than to think this means anything has changed – she’s upset, and he’s probably a right git for kissing her at all when she’s all wound up like this. But if he was truly a good man, they wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place, now would they? So he’s going to go on kissing her and pay the consequences later. 

She’s pressing against him, grasping hard at his shoulder now and pressing forward, pressing him against the wall at his back and making these soft, desperate sounds as she kisses hungrily, and who in their right mind would be strong-willed enough to put a stop to such a thing? So no, he doesn’t pull back, doesn’t stop, has to fight hard to keep that hand at her waist and hug her closer instead of letting it drop to the curve of her ass like he wants to, grasp a palmful of her and hoist her against him. He manages, just barely, not to do that as he focuses on giving that full lower lip a little bite, a soft scrape of teeth.

They’re both breathing heavily now, lips parted just enough for her to tell him again, “I’m sorry,” her lips bussing against his in a softer smooch. 

“Don't be,” he assures her, combing her hair back behind her ear and pressing a kiss to the corner of her mouth before he says, “I like kissing you.”

“But this doesn’t mean—”

“I know,” he shakes his head, pulling back enough to look at her without his eyes crossing. “I’ll take what I can get.”

She looks conflicted for a moment, but then she nods again, leans in and closes her lips on his, lingering and soft, but with an intensity behind it. She’s tense, still, and he lets a hand slip beneath her sweatshirt, over the thin material of her vest, giving the base of her spine a little circling stroke. Regina presses her brow to his and exhales heavily, and Robin frowns. This won’t do; this isn’t helping. As enjoyable as it is, it doesn’t seem to be  _ helping _ .

He brings one fingertip to her temple, taps lightly and murmurs, “Your brain is screaming.” When she tips her head back to scowl her confusion at him, he lets that finger run down her cheek, over her jaw, traces her damp bottom lip with it, as he tells her, “I can hear how loud you’re thinking, but I can’t make out the words. Talk to me.”

Her tongue slips out, wets her lips and the tip of his finger at the same time, and then she breathes in, and out, and confesses, “I kissed Sidney,” wincing, before adding, “Well, he kissed me.”

That finger stills on the tip of her chin as something green and ugly blooms in Robin’s gut.

“Oh.”

“It was— it wasn't terrible but…” Her frown deepens, her gaze dropping to somewhere around his collar as she settles back onto her heels, her fingers fiddling anxiously with the material of his shirt. “It was… uncomfortable.” A deeper frown, and she amends, “Actually, nevermind, it was pretty terrible.”

“Did he— Are you alright?”

She’s not alright – they both know that. If this is what this whole night has been about, if all this anxiety and worry are about that man putting his mouth on her, if that man in any way  _ harmed _ her, Robin will happily make introductions between his fist and Sidney’s face. Repeatedly. Until they both see red. 

She shakes her head, but she tells him, “I’m okay. He didn’t— I’m okay. I just feel… stupid. And…” She squirms a little where she stands, as if she can’t abide the feel of her own skin, and then, “He made me very… He was a little aggressive, for my tastes.” Robin’s hand tightens at her back, his jaw clenching, and she rushes to assure, “Not in a threatening way, just… too much.” She wets her lips again, nerves or maybe something else, he’s not sure, but suddenly he realizes why she was so eager to kiss him.

“So this is a bit of a palate cleanser, then?” he asks, without malice. Regina winces.

“Is that terrible?”

It should be, maybe, but to tell it true, he finds he doesn’t actually mind being the person she wants to have a good snog with after a bad date. Probably not healthy, but, well, that ship seems to have sailed for them a long time ago. So he smiles at her, and shakes his head, presses his lips to her brow and says, “I told you, I’ll take what I can get. Even if it’s sloppy seconds.”

“It’s not that,” she insists. “Believe me, you are not the second choice here. I just couldn't shake the feel of him… against me.”

There’s something in the way she says it, an edge of disgust, a sort of grimace that has him imagining just how  _ against her _ Sidney likely was, and he feels another dark wave of jealousy – or no, protectiveness, rather. Possessiveness, if he’s honest. He’s no fonder of the idea of that man all up against her than she seems to be – and if a good lip lock is what she needs to clear herself of the memory, he’ll kiss her til he’s blue.

So he questions, “And has it passed now?” then continues, “Or do I need to kiss you a little while longer? Maybe just to be certain?”

That squirming unease melts away a bit, her lips switching in something that’s almost a smile, before she nods a little and says, “We really shouldn’t. But… Maybe a little more. Just for tonight. Just to be certain…”

“Just for tonight,” he agrees, kissing her brow again. “Just to be certain.” And then her temple. “Just to get that bad taste out of your mouth.” 

She hums her agreement as his mouth covers hers, and this time it’s a little less desperate, a little more intentional. He kisses her deeply, but lets her lead, savors the sweep of her tongue, the soft bite of her teeth against his lip. If it's a mistake, it's hardly their first, and he's resolved not to care about it.  

**.::.**

Selfish, selfish, so selfish. She is so selfish, but for the first time since Sidney planted his lips on her, she feels truly settled. Robin holds her gently against him, a hand at her waist, but grasping not restricting, his arm the only thing at her back. She does not feel caged, does not feel trapped, and she  _ knows _ this is a colossal blunder but it does not feel like one. 

It just feels  _ good.  _

So she winds her arms up around his neck, tugs him even closer and dives in deep. He has one hand at the back of her head now, fingers tangled in her hair again, but loosely, she has plenty of freedom to tilt her head just so, or to pull away entirely and taste the column of his throat. He moans quietly when she does, and it thrills her, has her smiling and then scraping her teeth gently against his pulse. 

She feels him swallow heavily, his Adam's apple bobbing against her chin, and then the hand he's had at her back slips lower, fingertips skating just below where it would be considered polite. He hovers there until she gives a little nod of encouragement, and then he’s palming her rear and squeezing, using his grip to pull her impossibly closer. 

He's hard against her belly, and it sends a little rush of heat through her, has her grinding slowly into him because  _ this _ , this feels right. It shouldn’t, it is a non-option, but as Robin lets out a little groan and mutters, “Christ, Regina,” into the small space between them, she doesn’t feel a lick of the trepidation she probably ought to. Not a hint of the unease she’d felt earlier tonight.

She just feels, well, horny. She’s been trying so hard not to think of this, not to want this, has been trying for weeks, but she does, she does want it, and now it’s here, right in front of her. Robin’s lips (she kisses them again), and his hands (one still massaging her ass while the other shifts to cup warmly behind her neck), and his scent (clean, and woodsy, and familiar), and his… everything. It’s all right here for her to indulge in,  _ just for tonight, _ just for a few kisses, and she knows it’ll hurt come morning (knows it’ll hurt before she even leaves here, most likely), but right now she just wants to let herself enjoy it. One more time, one last time. (This is a familiar refrain, but maybe it’s a tune she’s fond of, after all.)

His fingers slip up into her hair again, tangling and tugging gently, guiding her head back, and now he’s the one ducking down to drop kisses along the length of her throat, and Regina is gasping and biting her lip. Goosebumps flare in his wake, prickling along the back of her neck, rising with a pleasant chill down her arm when his beard teases against sensitive skin just so. One of her hands slips down, takes its time wandering over his torso as he samples her neck, as he makes her pulse jump and skitter with well-aimed swirls of tongue and lazy, sucking kisses. That hand makes its way eventually down and around, tucking into his back pocket and squeezing – she’s not the only one with an ass worth groping, after all.

Robin chuckles into her neck, the puff of breath chasing a shiver through her, and then they’re moving. Back, and back, one stumbling step at a time, his mouth still on her. She lands kindly against the opposite wall, and spends a moment delightfully pinned there as he drops the hand at her neck to join the one on her behind, palming her shamelessly now as their mouths find each other, wet and eager, tongues battling fiercely; she hooks one ankle around his, his thigh wedged between hers, and then she’s not quite sure if she’s rocking against him or he’s squeezing her closer, but either way there’s friction where she needs it most (shouldn’t – there’s a reason why she shouldn’t, but it’s escaping her just now). 

And, oh, it’s good friction, slow and firm, their mouths easing up just a bit to match it. Robin sucks her lower lip between his and she exhales hard, both hands in his pockets now, their hips rocking, grinding, and fuck, this is… This is good, this is really good…

**.::.**

This is bad, very bad. 

She smells amazing, feels amazing, is warm and eager in his arms, dry humping him in the hallway while her son sleeps just a room away, and he was trying to steer them toward his studio, toward a door he could close between them and Henry, just in case, just in case, but then there’d been her mouth, and her hands, and  _ his _ hands, all full of her, her ass is a crime, and he needs to steer them a foot to the left, now, soon, before those soft gasping breaths she’s letting out while he sucks just behind her ear get any louder.

Okay, he’s… he’s going to do it, going to relocate them… right… now… 

He forces his hands from her ass – one hand, anyway, manages to slide one hand up and up, dipping underneath her sweatshirt, up her spine, and she arches and sighs, her chest pressing into his, and that is not helping, not helping in the slightest.

He wants to touch her, everywhere, wants his palms full of her tits, wants her naked (he’s not going to get her naked, that would be bad, that would be…. She’s upset, she’s here because she’s upset, he shouldn’t be doing this at all, but he certainly can’t do  _ that _ ). Wants this damned sweatshirt off at least, and that he can do, she’s wearing something beneath it, but if they’re going to be losing clothing, he really needs to move them behind closed doors.

That’s the motivation he needs, finally – the promise of more soft skin, of less separating fabric – but he’s not quite ready to let her go, so he lets his hand wander back down, down, grasping her just below her rear and hoisting her up. She squeaks a little, but recovers quickly, her thighs wrapping around his hips as he walks them the three steps to the doorway and then through it, turning to shut it behind them and pressing her to the door, bracing her weight there with one hand, their mouths still meeting heatedly as he gropes for the lock and flips it. 

Okay, alright, much better. So much better. 

And now that there’s privacy… 

He slides an arm beneath her rear and walks the few feet to his desk, deposits her on the edge of it and then reaches for her sweatshirt, yanking it up and off. It’s the furthest apart they’ve been in the last several minutes, and he finally gets a good look at her, her cheeks a bit flushed, lips rather more pink than usual, her hair all mussed by his fingers. The vest she’s wearing is thin, and she’s braless, her nipples hard beneath the fabric. She looks fucking incredible, and he reminds himself again that he should not have sex with her right now, they should not have sex right now, even if she looks like sex on a stick, they should definitely not—

He’s not the only one who took a moment to admire the other, but it seems she’s recovered first, because her hands are pushing at his t-shirt, shoving it up, and he lifts his arms to help her tug it off. Her palms are warm as she settles them on his shoulders, runs them down his chest, his stomach, her gaze following her hands until she reaches his belt, and uses it to yank him that last step closer, until he’s snug between her thighs again. Robin lets his hands fall to her hips, tugs her just a little bit closer to the edge of the desk, pressing into her and grinding their hips together, watching her lashes flutter and her tongue creep out to wet her lips, and then he kisses her again.

He wants to touch, itches to fill his hands with her, but he shouldn’t, they shouldn’t… Still, his hands creep up, spanning over her ribs, caressing, stroking, his thumbs meeting just below her sternum. His hands frame her tits, but he doesn’t go there, doesn’t touch, not until she brings one of her hands to the back of his, urging it up and squeezing before she’s back to running her palms along the waist of his jeans.

Who is he to deny such a clear invitation?

Robin slides his other hand up as well, thumbs seeking out her nipples and rubbing over them through the thin material. She grips his belt loops and rocks her hips against him, but doesn’t otherwise react overly much, and he remembers her saying she wasn’t particularly sensitive here, remembers having her tits in his hands, in his mouth, remembers what she liked (he’s replayed that night over in his head enough in the weeks since, much as he may be loath to admit). So he grasps at her through her top, squeezes firmly and rolls, and the sound she makes in response is bloody glorious.

**.::.**

They’re supposed to be kissing. Just kissing, just some kissing, just rinsing her mouth of the taste of Sidney, but they are way past kissing now, and she is wet, so wet, and he is  _ doing things _ with his hands, deliciously frictiony things with her nipples that just make that ache between her thighs sweeter and sharper. 

She wants him, wants him, and right now there is no good reason why she shouldn’t have him. They are both adults, both single, otherwise unattached adults, and they’re both incredibly turned on. He’s hard between her thighs, a solid bulge against her, and they have a sort of stilted, half-distracted rhythm going  – no, he’s half-distracted, she is very focused, grinding her ever more sensitive clit against him again and again and again, while he gives her an answering thrust on every third pass or so. He’s more focused on her breasts, warm hands slipping beneath her tank top now, cupping her bare skin, his thumbs rubbing again before they catch and tug and oh God, she wants more, doesn’t want to stop until she finally eases this tension, this  _ need _ . 

She moans his name, runs her hands up his arms (he has good arms, they feel even better than they look, strong and sexy, he’s strong and sexy, and God, this is a mistake but she doesn’t care right now, can’t care, it can’t beat the mistakes she’s already made lately), up his neck, weaving into his hair and tugging his mouth down to hers again, kissing fiercely, and he does this thing, gives her nipples tandem twisting tugs, and she moans, her jaw going slack mid-kiss, and that’s it, screw it, she’s doing this. 

She recovers the kiss, nips at his lip and then sweeps her tongue into his mouth, her hand groping to catch one of his and draw it down, down. He gets the general idea and escapes her grasp, his fingers tucking between her thighs and rubbing firmly enough that her head tips back on a gasp. She hisses a quiet  _ yesss _ and then catches her lip in her teeth, nodding as he focuses his attention in the area of her clit, his other hand abandoning her breast to cup behind her head and draw her into another kiss.

It’s brief, just a quick tangle of lip and tongue, and then he’s breathing against her, murmuring how warm she is, asking if he has the right spot, and does, mostly, is a little to the right of where he needs to be, but it’s still good. But this hadn’t been her intention, she’d wanted something a bit more...direct. So she circles his wrist again and draws it up, weaves their fingers and then slips them down beneath the waistband of her leggings.

Robin’s brows pop up slightly, and he pulls back, bites his lip and looks at her questioningly.  _ Are you sure? _ the look asks, and yes, right now, right this second, she is sure. Very, very sure. So she gives him a little nod, dips her head in closer and whispers, “Touch me.”

He doesn’t need to be asked twice. 

Robin’s hand ventures further down, wedging beneath stretchy fabric, slipping beneath cotton, and he exhales a breathy  _ Christ _ when he discovers just how wet she actually is. Regina feels her cheeks heat even more, her heart knocking hard in her chest as his middle finger finds her clit and begins to rub tight little circles there. 

She lets out a shaky exhale, and then figures turnabout is fair play and reaches for his belt, undoing it and his button and fly, then letting her hand sneak its way into his boxer-briefs and wrap around his erection. He groans and drops his forehead to hers, the hand not in her pants planting itself on the desk beside her hip as she strokes him slowly. He’s hot and smooth in her hand, thick in her grip, his skin so soft, and she wants him, shouldn’t have sex with him because that’s… that’s not what they do, for reasons she resolves not to think about just now because she is  _ enjoying _ this, and it’s just for tonight, and quite frankly getting a little groiny with Robin is a far better way to deal with her heartbreak than her last method of coping. 

(It’s not, that’s ridiculous, thinking that she’s better off fucking the man who’s causing her all this grief in the first place, but right now her id is firmly in control, and it says  _ Yes, Robin _ , and  _ Screw everything else _ , and as he starts to rub harder circles against her clit she’s inclined to listen).

**.::.**

He’s fucked. So fucked. Entirely fucked. 

He should not be doing this, should not be touching her like this, should not be dipping his fingers even lower, finding a whole new well of wetness and spreading it up to slick her clit even further, two fingers against her now, testing side to side rubs instead of the circles that had had her letting out these little gasps he’s grown rather addicted to in short order. She likes this, too, inhales sharply, her hand (so soft, all of her is so bloody soft) tightening on his cock and moving faster, shifting her grip so she can manage a longer stroke, and Christ, this is a bad idea – it feels so good, but he has to keep repeating it to himself:  _ No sex, there will be no sex, they’ll jerk each other off maybe, but there will be no sex... _

But she’s soaked, hot and slippery under his touch, and it makes him want more of her, makes him want to sink to his knees right here and bury his face between her thighs, to taste her, to lick until she quakes for him, until she’s coming and grasping at his hair and moaning his name, and shit, fuck— 

Her thumb rubs over his head, smears the little bit of precum across his foreskin, her touch ghosting against the very tip of him in a way that makes him moan a couple of low expletives. 

No sex, no sex, there will be no sex. 

There will be no sex, but if he doesn’t get off soon, this tension might kill him, and if her panting breaths and squirming hips are any indication, she’s not faring much better. He lets his fingers worm their way down again, stroking through her wetness and then easing back to her clit (she liked the circles better, he thinks; he’ll switch back to the circles), but she pushes back against his fingers, gasps, “Inside,” and, “Please, I need—” and who is he to refuse a woman in need?

He burrows his hand in deeper, but the waistband of her leggings is snug and there’s precious little room to maneuver. They need to go. 

She makes a little noise of protest when he draws his hand out, but slips dutifully off the edge of the desk when he tucks his fingers into her waistband and starts to tug the material down. He doesn’t bother to remove them entirely, just rucks them down her thighs until she’s bare for him (and God, she’s a picture – mostly dressed still, her vest a bit askew from his wandering hands but still largely in place, bare between mid-thigh and belly, but nowhere else – but he’s seen her bare breasts before, and he can imagine the composite view, and it is stunning). For a moment she looks almost self-conscious, and they can’t have that, so he murmurs  _ Beautiful _ against her lips just before he kisses them again, and then he brings his hand back to her.

He lets his fingers slip-slide through her wetness, slicks up the middle two and then sinks them into her slowly. She’s hot and velvety, slippery and snug, and they moan together at the feel of his fingers inside her. And then he starts to move, draws those two fingers in and out, shifting just so, and just there, searching, trying to find the angle and pressure she likes best. He presses up and in, and she lets out a desperate little  _ Mmm! _ against his mouth, and Robin grins, does it again, again, earns an  _ uh!  _ and a sharp gasp, and decides to stay just like that for a little while.

She reaches for his cock again, wraps her fingers around it and begins to stroke, but she’s distracted (he is too, now, but he tries very hard to ignore it, to not let the sweet, tugging pleasure of her hand draw too much of his attention from the task at hand). She works him lazily, pauses now and then, her grip falling slack as he finds a pressure and pace that have her stiffening slightly. Her hips are rocking into his touch, her breath rushing against his lips as she pants and gasps – they’re not kissing anymore, not really, just pressed together, breathing the same air, brow-to-brow as hers scrunches, those so-kissable lips slack as she chases her pleasure. Her hand is still looped around him, but she’s mostly stopped moving it now, and that’s fine by him, for now; it makes things easier for him. 

But he wants her closer, wants to watch her come apart, so he shifts his hand slightly, presses the heel of it against her and switches his stroke to more of a deep, rocking pressure rather than an in-and-out. It brings his palm against her clit, keeps his fingers tucked deep inside her, and she makes this  _ noise _ that goes straight to his cock (thank God she’s not wanking him anymore, thank God…), this throaty, indulgent moan, and he wants to make her make that noise again and again and again.

He moves his hand faster, harder, and she does, she moans, and moans, and it occurs to him that that’s actually probably not a good thing, as much as he enjoys it. This room may be locked, but it’s not soundproof.

So as much as it pains him, he steals another kiss from her, and urges, “Shh. Henry.”

And regrets it immediately. 

Reigna stiffens, sucking in a breath, one of her hands flying to his wrist and grasping hard as her eyes pop open, the heavy-lidded, aroused look she’d been wearing for the last little while replaced by wide-eyed dismay.

“Oh, God,” she rasps. “Oh, God, what are we – we can’t do this with Henry in the next room.”

It’s a small consolation to him that she doesn't say they can’t do this  _ at all.  _

“We’re behind closed doors,” he points out, fingers stilled inside her now, her grip like a vice on his wrist. She starts to make a face, like that fact is trivial, so he continues, countering her expression with, “Are you saying you’ve not had sex in your own home in the last ten years?”

Because she has, he knows she has – she dated someone, for quite some time.

Sure enough, she admits, “Well, yes – but that's different. It's  _ my _ home.” Her grip loosens ever so slightly, her gaze dropping along with the volume of her voices as she hisses, “It's not getting fingered by the neighbor while my son sleeps on the couch one room away.” Her eyes squeeze shut, and she groans, “Oh God, I’m a terrible mother.”

“You're not,” he assures, frowning, because that is the last thing he wants her to think. This was supposed to ease her mind, to dissolve a few of her worries, not add to them. She shifts a little, and he feels her clench slightly around his fingers – she’s still soaked and hot, her body is very much ready to continue even if her mind is not. And truly, they’re not doing anything  _ so _ terrible – Henry is asleep, they’re both single, and they want this. They’ve wanted this. And he really does want to help her unwind a bit, so he gives her a little smirk, and teases, “And besides, if we stop now, you'll be the mom who got fingered by the neighbor while her son slept a room away  _ and didn't even finish.  _ Isn't that worse?”

It’s a gamble, but it pays off: she snorts a laugh, and tells him he's terrible. And then she bites her lip, her gaze sliding to the closed door. Robin takes a chance on another slow, deep stroke into her, pressing up and in firmly, but slowly, his hand grinding against her clit. Her jaw drops open, lashes fluttering, and she swallows thickly.

“Were you close?” he asks quietly, leaning in just a little closer, and pressing a kiss to her brow, her temple. Regina nods, and he works his fingers inside her again, one more stroke pulling a shuddering breath out of her. “Do you want me to stop, or make you come?”

The question has her sucking in a breath, her eyes dropping shut, her lips pressing together. Robin keeps up the slow pace inside her, not chasing her orgasm quite yet, just keeping her stoked in case she says yes (God, he hopes she says yes…).

**.::.**

She should stop this. This is a mistake, this is a bad idea, this is… delicious. 

Toe-curling.

His hand is  _ doing things _ , and she should want him to stop because this isn’t going anywhere (that’s the reason, the reason that had escaped her when she was shoving his hand down her pants like some horny teenager), it can’t, but he has a point – they’ve already come this far. Stopping now won’t keep him from having been knuckle-deep inside her, stopping now won’t undo how incredibly inappropriate this was, stopping now won’t make her feel any better about the fact that she let this go so far instead of just keeping her lips to herself earlier and accepting the innocent  _ hug _ she was offered. 

But stopping now  _ will _ mean she has to go home wet, and needy, and on the edge. Means she will inevitably end up with her own hand down her pants and knuckle-deep inside of her, thinking of him, and not nearly as satisfied as she would be if she just… did the thing she shouldn’t.

If she just, yes, lets him  _ make her come _ (and how can he make three little words sound so sexy?). 

She shouldn’t do it – but she’s going to. 

“I want—” she starts, the words catching in her throat as his fingers rock again and push a bloom of pleasure up and out. His lips press to her cheekbone, and she whispers the rest, “Iwantyoutomakemecome.”

Robin groans, a deep, eager, relieved sort of groan and then he’s kissing her again, fiercely, his hand starting to move faster, faster, harder, and ohhh, God, this was a good idea, but a bad idea, it feels so good, so good, has been feeling so good, finally being touched by someone  _ else _ , by  _ him _ , having pleasure spread and spread, and the way his hand keeps grinding on her clit. It has her thighs starting to tremble, has her wishing she wasn’t standing (bare-assed in the room where he teaches her son to play guitar, oh God, what is she doing??).

She opens her eyes again, finally, turning her head out of the kiss (he moves to her neck, sucks kisses along it in a way that makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand pleasantly on end), and staring at that door. Did they lock that door? She sure as hell didn’t, and she was— “oh” —busy with other— “hunh,  _ Robin _ ” “Shhh…” —things when they came in here. Namely with— “Mm! Mmmm… just like that, please, oh…” —climbing him like a tree, if she recalls. 

“Shh…”

“The door—”

“Locked,” he assures, and well, that’s something at least, and oh, his hand, faster now, harder, fuck, this is good, this is good but now her mind is being tugged in different directions ( _ they shouldn’t be doing this _ warring with  _ hell yes, they should _ , and  _ please don’t let Henry wake up _ throwing stones from the sidelines). It’s distracting, pulling her out of the moment, keeping her from being quite as close as she could be, and he’s watching her, he knows, asks, “What do you need, babe?”

She wants his tongue. Right now, in this moment, right now, she wants his tongue on her clit. But she  _ should not _ do that, it’s bad enough she’s doing  _ this _ – doing that would be very bad, letting him do that, getting that close, it would… it would be… God, it would feel so good.

“More,” is all she manages to say, her teeth clamping into her bottom lip to keep her from asking for anything else (she wants him inside her, badly, more than his fingers, all of him, she wants to  _ have _ him, she needs to come soon so the wanting is less or she’ll do something very, very dumb). 

And then he’s pausing for a second (she lets out a little groan of protest – she’s close, but not quite close enough, but she sure as hell doesn’t want him to sto— _ ohhh… _ ) 

He’s tugged her tank top down with his free hand, bared her breasts, and cupped one warmly, grasping at her nipple and squeezing and tugging, and his hand starts moving again and fuck, oh, this might do it, this might be enough…

“You’re so gorgeous,” he rasps, and oh, that will help, too. “You’ve no idea how fucking good you look right now. No idea how long I’ve wanted to watch you come… Yes, that’s it, gorgeous, enjoy every moment, I’ve got you… God, I want you so much.”

Oh, he shouldn’t say that, shouldn’t, not with his fingers inside her, not with his hand on her breast, not with the way she’s starting to tremble, so close, God, so close…

She nods fervently, whispers, “yes,” and “please,” and “me too,” and then he shifts tactics altogether, goes from those deep, delicious pulses to a quick and hard thrusting, his palm slapping against her clit again, again, again and she goes rigid, and gasps sharply, ohfuckthat’sitthat’swhatsheneeds.

Robin’s mouth is on hers suddenly, swallowing the moans she’s can’t suppress as he drives her swiftly toward release, God, she needs release, and his palm smacking against her, his fingers, her nipple, she’s, he’s, she’s—

She’s grasping at his arms, nails scraping along his bicep, and she can’t keep standing – can, but doesn’t want to, her thighs are quaking, her everything is—

“So gorgeous,” he whispers against her mouth, his own voice breathy and strained, “Let go for me, babe, let me see you, let go, God, I want to go down on you—” She nods furiously, gasps  _ Please! _ , but he doesn’t, the bastard, he tells her, “No, I can’t, babe, I need to watch you come, you’re so close, I can see it, you’re so gorgeous right now, I need to watch you.” She moans her protest, but he just fucks her harder, and she makes a sound he has to muffle with another kiss, the hand at her breast leaving to tangle in her hair, holding her against his mouth as she writhes, and then he’s saying something else, asking her – he expects her to think coherently right now?? To listen?? – asking her, God, fuck, oh God, if he can go down on her someday, if she’ll let him, and she would promise him God and country right now if it would make her come so she nods, groans yes, grips hard at his arms to steady herself as her toes curl, her whole body taut, she is  _ so close, so close! _

**.::.**

She’s so close, so snug around his fingers, her face twisted in bliss, nails digging into his arms, she’s gone rigid, riding that edge but not quite able to tip over, and his bloody arm is starting to cramp.

And he’s half a mind to drop to his knees and finish her with his tongue, but he’s always believed you shouldn’t abandon a woman on the brink of orgasm – if it’s working, don’t change a bloody thing, and this is  _ working _ for her, she just can’t seem to quite make it over the hump – and as much as she may have begged it when he asked, he doesn’t think she’s exactly in the right mind for making decisions right now.

But Christ Almighty does he ever want to, wants to spread her out on his bed and feast on her, wants her fingers tangled in his hair as she bucks against his mouth, wants—

It’s a lie, he knows it is, they’re not doing this again (he very much selfishly hopes they do), but she’d said yes, and damnit, he’s going to use the plea to his advantage right now, use it to hurry her along, push her just that little bit further. 

He drops his brow to hers, holds her close so he can cover her with kisses if she gets too loud, and then he tells her in a frantic whisper exactly what he wants to do to her: “Someday, gorgeous, I’m going to eat you until you scream, hold those thighs in my hands and lick and lick at you” —she trembles harder, arches against his hold, that’s more like it...— “suck and suck until you come apart for me, taste every glorious bit of you, bury my tongue inside you until you writhe” —she whines and bites at that bottom lip again, it’s pink already, between his kisses and her anxious bites, and her nails are painful little half-moons in his biceps— “You’re so wet, babe, all I want is to drop to my knees right here, right now, and flick my tongue against you until you—” 

Orgasm hits her hard, like a jolt, her muscles clenching around his fingers, her jaw dropping open on a moan he rushes to stifle, but he wants to watch her, doesn’t want to miss this, so he keeps up the driving rhythm of his hand for another few seconds, her lips bruising against his as she moans and moans into his mouth, and then he drops the pace, switches back to those deeper, slower pumps that he’d started with and gives his bicep a break from the fierce tempo he’d been keeping. 

He breaks the kiss to watch her, still riding out her orgasm, her cheeks all flushed, and she bites down on that lip again, hard, her moans strangling in the back of her throat without him to muffle them. 

“That’s it, babe,” he coaxes, trying to memorize her like this, in her bliss, bliss of his causing, tries to imprint the sight of her on his brain, every little bit of her. Murmurs, “I’ve wanted to watch you come for so long,” and she nods, and nods, and clenches around him, her hips rolling against his hand. Her belly is trembling, one hand white-knuckling the desk she’s propped against, the other still grasping his arm, her eyes squeezed shut tight. “Tell me when to stop, babe,” he breathes. “Tell me when it’s enough.”

Her brow scrunches hard, and for a second she looks pained, but it melts away almost immediately, and she’s back to the look of rapture, the desperate little moans in the back of her throat.

**.::.**

Never. It’ll never be enough.

His palm is against her clit, rocking and rubbing, his fingers inside her, and it’s almost uncomfortable, it’s too much, too sensitive, but when he stops, that’s it. It’s over. 

  
And she can’t – doesn’t want – her brain is still short circuiting from the pleasure, but she has a sort of impending sense of doom, a sadness creeping into the edges of her that have begun to settle back down from the high of orgasm, and suddenly she wants very much to be kissing him again. To be close to him again. 

She blinks her eyes open (he’s watching her, his face close, his blue eyes dark), only to shut them again a moment later after she zeroes in on his lips and pulls him into another heated lip lock. The pleasure starts to lose that shine of  _ so good _ and gain that edge of  _ too much _ , so she finally, finally closes her thighs around his hand, drops her own hand down and squeezes his wrist to still him.

He stops, but doesn’t pull back, just kisses and kisses her, fingers still buried inside her. His hand is slack against her though, no more pressure, and after a moment he eases his fingers out and cups her almost tenderly. Their kisses slow and sweeten, the hand in her hair shifting to the back of her neck and cradling there. 

Her legs feel like jello, and she's still throbbing deliciously with the afterglow of what they've just done. His fingers tease against her, his palm still cupping warmly, but those fingertips stroke gently through her wetness and she becomes suddenly very aware that she's half stripped. Her tank is twisted at her waist, her leggings around her thighs, and she feels very… naked. And a little foolish. 

So while he keeps up languid rhythm of their mouths, she reaches down and blindly attempts to right herself. Their lips part with a soft, wet sound as he moves to assist, drawing his hand back finally and reaching for her leggings as she does, helping her ease them back up one-handed. 

The hand that had been inside of her is slick, coated with her, and she blushes, ducking her head when he – oh, God – brings it to his mouth and sucks the taste of her from his fingers. He makes this little noise as he does, a little moan, but she's preoccupied now by the erection firmly in her line of sight. 

He's still very, very hard, and she should probably help him with that... 

But then he’s kissing her again, open-mouthed and seeking, and she’d be lying if she said she didn’t get a little thrill at the taste of herself on his tongue. This was a terrible idea. This will not make the missing him, the wanting him, any easier.

But they’ve already come this far, and he’s not come at all, so while he slides that damp hand around to settle on her spine and steady their embrace, she lets hers skate down between them and wrap around him. 

The moan he lets out is half surprise, half relief, but she only gets a few strokes in before he’s shaking his head, breaking their kiss and murmuring, “It’s alright. You don’t have to. This was for you.”

That… hardly seems fair. True as it may be.

She pulls her head back an inch to look at him without her eyes painfully blurring, strokes up and down the length of his cock slowly, again, again. God, he’s attractive. Why does he have to be so attractive? Why couldn’t he be average-looking, and maybe have some mild hygiene issues, so that at least when she thinks about how she can’t have him, she’d have a few more things to tick off in the Reasons Not To Be That Broken Up About Robin column. But no, he has to have those dimples, and those eyes, and those arms, that torso. Has to have that slack-jawed expression of pleasure as she rubs her thumb over the tip of him, peeking out from his foreskin, he’s so hard for her, his breath hitching as she does it again, again. 

“Regina…” he groans. “I mean it. Y-You don’t have to.”

“I know,” she tells him, the velvety smoothness of her own voice surprising even to her. She sounds like sex. She feels, at this particular moment, as his Adam’s apple bobs with a heavy swallow, very sexy. “I want to.” And she finds she really, truly does. After all, “You’re not the only one who wants to know what the other person looks like when they come.”

He lets out another little groan at that, gives a little nod, and says, “If you insist…”

Regina has to stifle a snort.  _ If she insists _ . She wants to tell him not to look a gift handjob in the mouth, but she also knows she should probably not draw this out too long. The later parts of the movie, the louder parts, are the ones most likely to wake Henry, and even if he can’t walk in on them, she’s going to have a hell of a time explaining what she and Robin are doing behind a locked door that has them all tousled and flushed. 

So she doesn’t tease. She tries to play his game instead, remembers the way every whispered word of his had pushed her closer and closer to the edge moments ago, the flickering images of his every promise coupling with the feel of his hand to finally bring her release. 

So she keeps her voice low, speeds the pace of her hand a little, and asks, “Was it everything you imagined? Watching me?”

He lets out another heavy breath and nods, murmurs, “Gorgeous,” and she thinks he’s probably biased, but can’t help the curve of her lips at the compliment. 

“You keep saying that,” she whispers, spiraling her hand a little on the next full stroke of him and watching him gasp, watching his teeth sink into his bottom lip. “I’m not sure I believe my O-face is gorgeous, but I’ll give you this one.”

He chuckles, breaking off into a moan when she swipes her thumb over his head on the upstroke again, and then gasping, “It is,” and “trust me,” as the hand he’s had at her neck slides forward and down, cupping one of her breasts and kneading, his thumb rubbing across the nipple. He doesn’t grasp, though, doesn’t squeeze, and he knew what got her going earlier, so she thinks this is just for him – a good grope and fondle to help speed him along, his tongue peeking out to wet his lips as his hips start to move just slightly in her grasp. 

She keeps talking, tells him, “I could barely keep quiet, you felt so good,” and he squeezes gently, runs his hand to her other breast and cups that one, too. She strokes him faster, grips a little firmer, and teases, “I’ve wanted this for a long time, too. Used to think about you… when I was alone…” 

Robin breathes out a labored, “ _ Fuck _ ,” his eyes dropping shut, his head tipping in closer, close enough to kiss, and so she does, matches the rhythm of her mouth to the tempo of her hand and kisses, and kisses him. When they break, they’re both breathless, but Robin a little more so, and she stays close, her lips a whisper from his as she confesses, “I used to imagine my fingers were your fingers…” He moans, a little desperate, needy, his hips bucking into her touch and she fights not to grin. Nothing like a little masturbatory fantasy to get a guy going, huh? “Robin…” He lets loose a questioning noise of acknowledgment, one hand still on her breast, the other migrating to grope her ass and squeeze there too. “Yours felt better than mine. So much better.”

His brow falls to hers on a groan, and he mutters, “Christ, you’re killing me.”

“I’m trying to make you come.” 

Her hand moves faster, faster, a little harder, slowing down to spiral over the head, and he moans again: “It’s working.”

She’s splitting her time between watching his face and her hand, watching the pleasure flicker across his features, and y’know, he may be on to something, because it’s not the handsomest look he’s ever worn, but there’s a definite satisfaction to knowing she’s the one who has him all riled up. To knowing that with just a few words, and a well-placed touch, with just images of her, and the things she’s done, the things they’ve done, he’s fast approaching that edge.

  
This may be stupid, it may be a big mistake, but she’d be lying if she tried to tell herself it’s not something she’s going to revisit again and again when she’s alone. She’d be lying if she tried to say that right here, right now, she’s not very much enjoying the show. Very much enjoying the way his breath hitches, the way his jaw clenches, the soft groans in the back of his throat. His hands are wandering again, caressing, restless against her hips, her belly, her breasts, her rear, taking her in, touching, squeezing, his breath going deeper, deeper…

“This was a bad idea,” she tells him, and his brow knits. “Now I want  _ this _ ” —she gives him a firm, slow stroke, tip to root and back again— “and I can’t have that.”

“You can have anything you bloody want,” he groans, and she grins, shakes her head. In a minute, she knows she won’t find this whole thing so amusing, but right now she has him desperate for her, panting and grasping at her, close, and it thrills her. 

“If I sucked you off right now, how long do you think it would take?” she wonders, and he’s groaning halfway through, breathing heavily, hips jerking slightly. She chuckles, works him faster, leans in to give his bottom lip a little suck and murmurs, “Not long, hm? Is that what you want?”

Robin nods, kisses her hard, kneads her ass again.

“Too bad; I want to watch you.”

He lets out a choked laugh, scoffing, “You’re evil,” as he recognizes the words as his own. 

“Sucks, doesn’t it?” she returns dryly, and then one of his hands is on hers, moving with her until she gets back to his head and then squeezing tighter, guiding her into a short, sharp rhythm, a tighter grip than she’d been using, a faster pace. “Just like this?” she asks, maintaining as his hand finds its way to her ass again. He doesn’t answer, just nods, eyes shut tight, his tongue poking out between his teeth, breath coming quick, and she watches as his brow scrunches again, his hands tightening on her, and then he moans harshly and jerks in her grasp, and she has just enough time to bring her other hand in and use it to cover the tip of his cock before he’s coming, warm and slippery against her fingers as he moans again, once more. 

And then he relaxes, lets his head dip forward until his cheek is against her temple, his breath washing heavy down her neck, and that’s that.

There they are. Well-fucked, the both of them, her slippery between the thighs, hands dripping with cum (she realizes too late there is not a tissue anywhere in this room), him still trying to catch his breath, still firm in the slick circle of her grasp.

And not a damn thing has changed. 

This was a bad idea.

Kissing was a bad idea – an okay idea, maybe, if it had just been kissing. Just a little making out, just until she didn’t feel so raw. But they’re not capable of  _ just making out _ , it seems. No, they had to go whole hog, had to get half-naked and go the mutual handjob route instead.

Because that was wise. That was a good idea.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, his hands grasping gently at her wrists as he looks around the room and frowns, finally tugging up the boxer briefs still scrunched around his thighs and saying, “Just wipe them on here, I’ll take them off in a minute.” She does her best, wipes her hand off on his cotton-clad hip, the other on his thigh. It leaves her a little sticky, but she can wash them in the kitchen in a few minutes. She doesn’t say anything while she does it, while his hands carefully draw her tank top up until her breasts are no longer bare. When her hands are free, she tugs the straps over her shoulders, and he asks, “Did I cock all this up?”

Regina scoffs a laugh. “I kissed you. And I put your hand down my pants. You’ve made mistakes in this… whatever we have… but this one, I’m pretty sure is on me.”

“I could’ve stopped it.”

“You could’ve. I could’ve, too.” He catches her hands, then, and she weaves hers with both of his, draws him in closer, until they’re wrapped around her waist. “I’m not mad at you for this. But…”

Regina shakes her head, and he finishes for her: “It doesn’t change anything, and can’t happen again?”

She nods, solemnly, tells him, “But on the plus side, I’m not an anxious mess anymore,” and watches his mouth curve into a smirk.

“Mission accomplished, then.” His palms skim up her back, and down again, and he asks, “It was good, though, yeah? You enjoyed it?”

One dark brow arches regally. “You couldn’t tell?”   
  


“I could,” he grins. “Just making sure.”

“Just wanted to hear me say it, you mean?” she accuses, but without any malice, and then he's stepping in even closer, until they're pressed snugly together, and pressing his lips to her brow. 

“Maybe,” he admits, and then, “Or maybe I'm just making conversation. Not quite ready to let you go yet.”

And it will be a letting go, she knows. They both do. And truth be told, she isn't quite ready yet either, so she tips her head up, runs her palms up to the back of his neck and guides him down for another kiss. 

The heat from before is all gone, leaving a sort of aching sweetness in its wake. They linger over each other, savoring, his beard rasping lightly against her chin, his arms a solid comfort around her waist, palms splayed warmly over the base of her spine. They've had goodbye kisses before – they're on their, what, third? – and each one has made her chest squeeze painfully. 

This one is no different. 

When it breaks a little whimper sounds between them, and she's not sure if it came from him or her or both in tandem. They don't separate, not really, stay just where they are, breathing each other's air, noses bumping, neither quite ready to pull back just yet. 

“If you need anything, I'm—”

“Right here,” she finishes, smiling sadly at him, palms rubbing up from his neck until she can swipe her thumbs across his cheeks. “I know,” she tells him softly. And then, “Thank you. For being a friend.”

She'd meant it sincerely, but his lips curve slyly, his gaze dropping between them pointedly as he says, “Anytime.”

That slow-squeezing vice around her chest hasn't abated, but she manages a laugh, a short, breathy one that she chases by leaning in again to kiss him on impulse. It's a sweet peck, brief, but one of his hands ends up in her hair, grasping lightly and then tucking it behind her ear as they part. 

He swallows heavily, his brow creased, and then he drops a kiss to hers and says, “You should go wake your son.”

Regina nods, breathes deeply in and out, and then they ease away from each other, hands lingering against arms, against fingers, and when they finally do separate, Regina feels cold. He bends to retrieve her sweatshirt – Daniel’s sweatshirt – from the floor and stands closer than a friend should as Regina tugs it on over her head, arms folding across her chest to keep from reaching for him again as soon as it’s on. His own shirt is back in place by then, too, and she gives him another sad smile before they both head for the door.

**.::.**

****  
  


Robin walks a step behind her, resists the urge to place a guiding hand at the base of her spine (it’s not like she can’t make her own way to the door), and mentally berates himself for his utter lack of self-control. Oh, sure, he hadn’t slept with her, but they’d gotten plenty carried away, and it’s not like he hadn’t known it. 

And now instead of just the persistent pain of their separation, there’s a sort of awkwardness, and an itch already to touch her again like he just was. To be with her. 

He’d meant to ease her mind, and no doubt he ended up doing much the opposite. Gave her something else to stew over. (A dark, possessive part of him whispers that at least her thoughts won’t be full of Sidney, at least she’ll be brooding on him – the fact that he thinks that at all is a reminder that she deserves better than him.)

They’re three steps out into the hall, headed for the kitchen again, when Regina startles slightly and stiffens, going stock still, and it’s another step before Robin sees why: John is standing in the kitchen, stuffing his gob with a fast-food burger and fries. 

Bollocks. As if this wasn’t awkward enough.

He locks eyes with his roommate over Regina’s shoulder, and John’s face is somehow completely nonchalant and all too knowing. Fuck. 

John swallows a mouthful and then greets quietly, “Hey,” and Regina comes to life again, taking a few stilted steps into the kitchen, and offering a soft hello in kind. One of her hands lifts to brush her hair behind her ear; she’s nervous. Or uncomfortable, at least, and how could she not be?

Robin has to fight not to reach for her again, feeling a surge of guilt and protectiveness. 

“I saw Henry, and thought maybe we were having another sleepover,” John comments, and Robin feels a flare of temper.

“Don’t start, mate,” he warns darkly, and John’s brows lift. Regina tucks her hand back into the tight twist of her crossed arms; Robin can see the way she grips her bicep as her lips purse and then press together.

“I wasn’t,” John replies. “I was just going to ask if she’s feeling better, after last weekend.”

Shit. Right. The actual sleepover that they’d had with the boys last weekend. 

“Yes,” she answers John, her voice low, too, all of them trying not to wake the sleeping child on the sofa. “I am, thank you.”

“And these jerks ate all the cookies you sent home, by the way,” John chides, and Robin knows, they all know, that John must know what they were doing. He must know what was happening behind closed doors to have them all feeling so painfully awkward, but he doesn’t bring it up, thank God. Just pops another fry in his mouth as Regina’s lips tip up into a genuine, albeit small, smile.

“I’ll make another batch,” she tells him. “Just for you. If I recall, you have a weakness for peanut butter, right?”

“I do, but Tuck’ll try to eat them outta my hand,” he replies, and she grins. 

“Maybe if you sent him to obedience school, he’d be better at listening to the word ‘no,’” she sasses, adding, “And staying off my sofa every single time he comes by.”

The banter has Robin smiling, too, out of relieved gratitude if nothing else. And because he can’t resist taking it out of her just a little, he points out, “That dog is never on your sofa. He’s too afraid of the scolding he’ll get.”

Dark eyes settle on him, narrowing before she accuses, “Traitor.” 

John laughs, shaking his head, and telling Regina, “Don’t go out of your way. But next time you make a batch, shoot me a text and I’ll sneak over and stuff a few in my face.”

“Deal,” she agrees, and then her shoulders are lifting and falling, and she says, “I should get Henry home.” Her gaze flicks to Robin and holds there, brown steady on blue, intent as she says, “Thanks for… letting me talk.”

He gets her meaning – thanks for the comfort, however ill-advised their methods may have been. So he nods, and says, “Of course,” and then, “Have a good night.”

“You, too.”

“It was good to see you again,” John tells her, and her gaze lingers on Robin’s for a moment longer before she lets her attention be pulled away. He wishes he knew what she was thinking, and then thinks, no, he probably doesn’t want to know after all. 

“Yeah,” she agrees. “You, too. I’ll let you know about those cookies.”

She heads for the living room then, for Henry, coaxing him awake with soft words, and then looping her arm around his shoulder and guiding his sleepy, half-stumbling self toward the door. John and Robin stay in the kitchen, John taking another bite of his burger, Robin cracking open another beer.

It’s not until she’s out the door that John finally speaks. “Giving her space, huh?”

Robin takes a long pull on his beer, and then declares soundly, “Sod off.”


	25. Chapter 25

Monday brings with it more twisting anxiety, and an oily-bellied nausea that puts the weekend to shame. She'd taken the previous two days to chew over what had happened with Robin, what it meant, what it absolutely _could not_ mean. Had vowed to herself that it wouldn't happen again, that it couldn't, and had contented herself with the knowledge that he would understand – _did_ understand. Had understood from the moment she'd planted her lips on his.

It was a comfort, but one that left a burning ache in her chest.

Still, it was better than the way she feels right now.

She needs to talk to Sidney, and she knows she should do it first thing. Just get it out of the way and over with, so they can both move on with their day. She'll drop her purse in her office, boot up her computer, maybe grab a cup of coffee, and then cut the cord.

She sees the flowers from six feet away, a massive bunch of them, roses again, in pinks and reds and whites. There must be two dozen in the vase that rests on her desk, and her stomach swoops low.

Her gaze sticks to them, drawn to the display as if it were flypaper (she nearly misses the edge of her desk as she sets her purse down, she's so distracted by the bouquet). There's a card – of course there is – and she plucks it out and reads the sweet words with another slither of dread: " _Beautiful flowers for a beautiful woman, after our beautiful evening. Cannot wait to spend more time with you. Entirely yours, Sidney."_

Right. This is going to be terrible.

And she should get it over with, just rip the band-aid off, but she needs a minute. Needs some courage.

So she stops by Mal's office first, sinking into the chair beside her desk, half-crumpled card still clutched in hand, as she admits, "You were right."

Mal doesn't even look up from her screen, simply quirks one perfectly sculpted brow and says, "Yes. I was."

That she doesn't even bother to ask what she's referring to galls Regina, but she swallows her pride and mutters, "He was the worst possible rebound. It is not just a little workplace crush. And I never liked him in the first place."

"All things I tried to tell you a week ago," Mal reminds, finally shifting to give Regina her full attention. She sits back, links her fingers over her belly, elbows resting on the arms of her chair. "But you were adamant he deserved a chance."

"Well. That was a mistake." She takes a deep breath in and then out, and admits, "And now I have to end it, and I am not looking forward to that."

"Dumping the guy who practically bought out the florist for you this morning?" Mal snorts. "I'm sure it'll go over fine."

"You saw that, huh?" Regina grimaces.

"Sweetheart, _everybody_ saw that."

Shit.

The utter mortification of those four words has Regina fast realizing what Mal (and every other sane person) no doubt already knew a week ago: dating Sidney would have meant _dating Sidney_ , openly, for everyone to see. Coworkers, bosses, and clients alike – a prospect that sounds about as appealing to her as repeatedly jabbing a staple under her thumbnail. God, she is such an idiot, so dumb, such a stupid girl. Woman. Her mother's voice echoes in her head and Regina twists her fingers together, stares down at them for a second and breathes through another spike of anxiety.

"You're not gonna ask me to do it for you, are you?" Mal asks, doubtfully suspicious, and Regina snaps her head back up, clears her throat. "Because I have some hard limits, and dumping other people's bad decisions is definitely one of them."

Regina levels her with a look, rolls her eyes and assures, "I'm not _that_ pathetic. I'm going over there now, I just figured I'd give you a chance to gloat. And me a minute to work up my courage."

Mal looks at her for a moment, then pulls a flask out from her desk drawer and drops it between them.

"There," she says, lips twitching into a smirk. "A little of the liquid kind to bolster the real thing."

Regina snorts. "I don't think I need whiskey to get me through this, but thanks."

"Oh honey, this is not 'whiskey,' it's single-barrel aged bourbon. But suit yourself," Mal dismisses, but she leaves the flask there to tempt Regina anyway, adding, "I suppose you managed to get through a _beautiful evening_ with the man all on your own. You should be able to get through one shitty morning just fine."

Regina scowls, tightening her grip on the card. "You read it."

"I read a lot of things," Mal shrugs, adding, "Professional curiosity," before glancing back at her computer, and then reaching for her mouse, clicking a few things, typing a sentence or two. Like she hasn't just casually admitted to snooping through Regina's things.

"In my office, before I get in?"

"Well, if I do it when you're there, I'd have to ask permission."

"And wouldn't that be a novel idea," Regina mutters, before sighing heavily and running a nervous hand over her skirt, picking away a miniscule fleck of lint. She should really stop killing time here.

"Relax," Mal orders. "Sidney puts you on every account he can even half justify sharing the workload on, and I like to know what he's up to. Unfortunately, he keeps his office locked up tighter than Fort Knox. Everything's on his computer, or locked in his file cabinet, and with the security on them, you'd think he was harboring state secrets, not advertising buys. Luckily for me, you're more of an open book."

"I have a password on my—"

"Henry815," Mal interrupts, and Regina's mouth snaps shut. "A monkey could figure it out; you have the date circled on your calendar, for God's sake."

Well. Time to change that password.

But it still doesn't explain, "Just what exactly did you learn about Sidney's accounts from reading the card on the flowers he gave me?"

Mal flicks her gaze back over again, her lips twitching into a smirk, and then she admits, "Personal curiosity. And I like to be thorough."

Regina snorts. "I'm remembering this for the next time you say you hate office gossip."

"I hate Kathryn," she corrects. "And if you don't have this taken care of before the status meeting, I might have to start hating you, too. Bad enough I have to watch her mope, I don't want to be stuck watching Sidney make eyes at you for half an hour on top of it. My breakfast isn't sitting very well as it is."

Regina smirks, lifts a brow. "Late night?"

"Little too much courage," Mal admits, reaching for the flask with a slightly green expression before stashing it back in her desk. "But at least I had the good sense to keep it out of the office. Now quit stalling. Or go do it somewhere else, so I can get through the rest of these emails."

**.::.**

Mal is right, she _is_ stalling, so after her not-so-subtle dismissal, Regina decides to forego the coffee for now, and head straight to Sidney.

She finds him on the phone, relief flooding her at the momentary reprieve.

 _Coward_ , she berates herself, giving a little wave when he glances up and sees her about to turn and leave. But then he's shaking his head, and holding up a finger as if to tell her to wait, and her stomach swoops nervously again. She wants to bolt, to make excuses and come back later, but she doesn't. She's a grown-up; she can handle a little polite workplace dumping.

He interrupts whoever he has on the other line, says, "Ms. Hubbard, I'm sorry; something just came across my desk that needs my urgent attention. Can I give you a call back in a little while?"

Regina scowls and shakes her head at him. This is technically a social call; it doesn't warrant abandoning his work mid-conversation.

But he's shaking his own head, refusing her denial, and saying, "Yes, of course. You'll hear from me before lunch. Thank you so much, Ms. Hubbard. You, too. Goodbye."

He hangs up the phone and Regina does her best to be surreptitious about the way she sucks in a deep breath, lets it out slowly. As he waves her into his office, she thinks _Here goes nothing_ …

She'd meant to stand. To rip it off like a Band-Aid, get it all out there quickly, and be gone, but she takes two steps into Sidney's office and then sinks down into the chair across from his desk before she can catch herself.

"I see you got your delivery," he says, smiling at her and nodding toward the card still clutched in her hand, pleased as punch, and oh, this is going to be terrible. Suddenly, she feels like a jerk. She _has_ been a jerk. This wasn't fair to him, not from the word "go;" she shouldn't have done this.

But she did, and now she has to get out of it. Has to end this in a way that doesn't hamper their working relationship, or crush his poor, lovesick heart.

So she starts with, "I did; thank you. They're beautiful."

Sidney sits a little straighter in his seat, says, "I know you like roses. And I couldn't decide just which color to get you today, so I thought: why not get several? The more, the merrier, right?"

Not always, she thinks.

But she forces a smile, and says, "I suppose so. But… Sidney…" She has to fight not to fidget, has to fight the urge to let her hand press to her belly as furious butterflies kick up and riot around in there. "I'd prefer to keep my private life… private," she finishes. "What I do outside the office, I want to stay there – my dating life especially. So. I would really appreciate it if you didn't leave any more giant bouquets at my desk. People will talk."

He falters a little, his smile falling, and then he recovers, and nods. For a second she thinks it'll be that easy, but then he opens his mouth, and out comes, "I'm sorry, but I have to ask – is there something wrong with that? People talking?"

Oh, so very very much. And if she was less kind, if she was more like Mal, she'd say so. But she has to work with him; she can't really afford to be needlessly cruel.

So, instead, she says, "Well, we work together. You've brought me onto quite a few very lucrative projects over the years, and I'm very grateful, but I wouldn't want anyone to think I'm getting special treatment because there's… something going on between us. In fact, I think…" She swallows heavily, licks her lips, and continues, "I think maybe it would be better if we didn't let this go any further. The dates were nice – lovely, even, food poisoning aside – but we work well together, and I'd hate for anything to get in the way of that."

That bemused smile he'd been managing to maintain drops away entirely, and he shakes his head. Regina can tell she's hurt his pride when he asks, "What makes you think us seeing each other outside of work would get in the way of things? You spend time with Kathryn socially, don't you?"

"Yes," Regina answers slowly, and then, "But we usually skip the making out."

He chuckles at that (if a bit nervously), and says, "Fair enough. But, Regina… I think there's something here, something that could be… amazing." He smiles as he says the last part, and her stomach twists again.

No, no there is nothing here that could be amazing. Just something that could turn into a raging dumpster fire of bad workplace issues.

"I don't date coworkers, as a rule," she tries again.

"But you did," he says, and yes, she did. And what she was thinking that morning, and all the days since, she doesn't really want to consider. The level of lying to herself she engaged in to walk herself into this mess would make her laugh if it didn't make her want to cry.

So she's swallowing pride along with nerves as she admits, "Yes. I did. But I shouldn't have; that was unfair to you. I told you this summer has been… difficult for me, personally. And I haven't really been my usual self. You're a nice guy, Sidney, but I shouldn't have said yes when you asked me to dinner. I don't date at work. Personal policy. And I should have stuck to that, instead of putting us in this position."

He's not smiling anymore as he tells her, "But… we had such a nice time. Don't you think maybe personal policies are made to be broken, on occasion?"

If they are, she thinks she's already done that once this summer by dating a criminal without bothering to find out the details of his crime. Or dating a criminal, period.

But she can't say that, so she doesn't say that, she just repeats, "It's my personal policy," and then adds, "But it's not just _my_ policy, it's the company policy. There's a no-fraternization clause in our contracts, Sidney. And I can't risk my job, not even for something… nice."

"Leo won't care," he says, dismissive and sure, relaxing a little bit and following it up with, "Leo _doesn't_ care. And not just because we're friends. I mean, it's never really been enforced, Regina, you know that. Phil and Aurora got _married_ last summer."

"I know," she sighs. This really isn't going well. "Fairytale romance and all that. But they're in different departments. They don't work _together_ , they just both work here. It's different."

"Regina—"

"Sidney. I'm sorry, I really am, but… I don't want this in the office. If it goes poorly, it will make things weird for everyone, and I'll lose a friend." It's maybe an overstatement, calling him a friend, but she does it anyway, reaches forward and grabs his hand and adds, "And I wouldn't want that. So… let's just keep it professional, okay?"

For a minute – a long, tense stretch of seconds that she is fairly certain nears a full honest-to-God minute – he doesn't say anything. He just looks at their hands, hers still gripping his, and it occurs to her that she should really let go. This is getting more awkward by the moment, and so she finally does, gives him another light squeeze and then pulls back.

He sucks in a breath, then, and sits a little straighter in his chair, forcing a tight, miniscule smile, and telling her, "If that's really what you want."

She can't help the soft apology that spills from her lips – she really does genuinely feel bad for dangling the possibility of more with her in front him, finally after all these years, and then snatching it away again.

But what's done is done, and before things can get any _more_ awkward, she rises from her chair and beats a hasty retreat.

He's unusually quiet during their status meeting, keeps to himself for most of the day, and Regina finds herself feeling remarkably guilty about the whole thing. Her gaze lingers more than once on the bouquet at the edge of her desk, her stomach twisting every time. So when the end of the day comes, she takes the blooms with her, hoping that their absence will strip the last of the bad air from the office and leave things some semblance of the way they were.

**.::.**

Pre-schoolers make great distractions, what with their constant demand for attention, their busy-ness, their infectious energy. As a result, Robin doesn't have much time to think overly hard about what happened between himself and Regina – about her soft lips, or her soft tits, her wet kisses, and other very wet parts – over the weekend. And Marian had called Sunday with last-minute dinner plans, had asked if he'd keep Roland until Monday morning and drop him at daycare, and so his mental reprieve had lasted all the way until now.

Until Monday afternoon – ought to have been Monday morning, but it's possible Robin may have skived off morning daycare and taken Roland to the science museum for an hour instead. It's show and tell day, after all, and now he's freshly armed with a brand-new stuffed fish to show and an exciting adventure to tell. If he's lucky, Marian won't skin him alive for deviating from their son's usual schedule without checking in (but damnit, he's Robin's son too, and it was educational, and it's not as though he's going to be harmed in any way by missing half a day of someone else's babysitting).

Now, though, he is alone with his thoughts. Taking them for an afternoon jog around the neighborhood to the tunes of Matt Nathanson, and feeling a fair few of the lyrics to be a bit too on-point. He hears _We really shouldn't be left alone, the way we get into each other's bones_ … and thinks of Regina. Wonders how her day has been, wonders if she's had to deal with that tosser who'd kissed her yet, wonders if he has any right to even wonder (he doesn't).

Wonders if she's angry with him.

She hadn't seemed to be when she left, but she's had a few days to think on it now, and he should have known better than to let things get so carried away when she'd come to him upset. He feels a bit like he's let her down. A bit like a cad. A bit like he hadn't so much been that friend she'd been seeking out for comfort as a man who had taken advantage of her when she'd been low.

The guilt eats at him, has him pausing mid-run and flicking from his music to his messages, pulling up her name and letting his thumb hover for a moment before he gives in and texts: _Are you sure I don't owe you an apology?_

He waits a few seconds for her reply, and when it doesn't come, he tells himself she's busy at work and settles back into a jog. He makes it another block before his phone vibrates in his hand, and he squints down to see her reply.

_Positive. We're good. Henry at your place tonight?_

Relief floods him, and he sends her a quick thumbs up emoji, and then a slightly misspelled _Hope ur hvign a good day_ that he ought to have stopped to correct.

His phone buzzes again almost immediately: _You too_.

He doesn't respond, doesn't want to push, and he's not surprised when he doesn't hear from her again. But he runs a little easier, breathes a little better, feels a bit less like an ass. So that's something, at least.

**.::.**

"Henry!" Regina calls toward the upstairs as she snaps a lid onto the Tupperware she's been filling, "Hurry up – you're due at Robin's in two minutes!"

She hears his footfalls on the stair not long after, trudging heavily, and then he's walking into the kitchen and scowling at her.

"Why are my lessons still at his place?" he questions, and she thinks, _Here we go again. "_ I thought you guys were friends again. We spent all night there on Friday."

"We did, and… we are," Regina answers, even though right now she has no idea what they are. Friends, they're supposed to be. But she doesn't jerk off any of her other friends, so… She shakes herself out of that incredibly inappropriate thought to be having with her son in the room and makes excuses, "But it's nice for a mom to have some quiet time, and get some things done around the house without having to worry about interrupting anyone's lessons or anyone's sleep. So you're having lessons at Robin's from now on."

He opens his mouth to protest, and she cuts him off, holding out the Tupperware for him and saying, "Bring this to him, please. He always liked the pasta salad."

Henry's scowl deepens, but he stomps forward and takes the container anyway, asking, "Cookies?" and oh no, they will not be doing that again.

"Not grounded?" she counters, and he must know she's not in the mood for more complaints, because he sighs heavily and mutters, _Fine_ and _See you in an hour._

And then he goes, and she's left to fill the next hour of her evening.

**.::.**

She's not sent dinner home with him in ages, so when Henry shows up with a plastic container of that pasta salad he'd been left dreaming of for weeks, Robin is pleasantly surprised. And, to be honest, relieved.

He sees the gesture for what it is – a peace offering, a reassurance of sorts after his text this afternoon. A _What happened happened, but I'm not upset enough about it to deny you your coveted leftovers._

So he smiles as he takes it, smiles even as Henry mutters, "You guys are dumb," and trudges back toward the studio.

Henry has no idea how true that statement is, Robin thinks, but dumb as they are, complicated as they are, at least they're still okay.

**.::.**

On Tuesday, Robin takes August up on an offer to give him a hand with the bar's weekly deliveries. August's leg has been bothering him more than usual this week, and an extra set of hands will make the work go twice as fast.

So Robin shows up to The Rabbit Hole at eleven instead of three, and helps cart in cases and kegs. It's heavy work, and he wonders how August manages on his own most weeks – not that he's not perfectly capable. That limp rarely slows him down. It's not like he's hobbled, it's not like he's not strong, it's just… he limps.

Robin feels bad enough about the thought that he doesn't voice it, but he does take a moment while they're sitting at the bar afterwards, each knocking back half a pint of Shocktop to slake their thirst, and suggests, "You know, if you need a hand with deliveries, you can always call. I'm just down the road, and I've nothing to do with my Tuesdays."

August shrugs off the offer, says, "Usually I manage just fine." He taps his knee and adds, "Old injuries aside. But today the help was definitely appreciated. Thanks."

August swigs his beer and leans back a little on his stool, squinting at the wall of bottles. Robin worries again that he's somehow offended him even while he was trying not to.

"I only meant—" he clears his throat a little, absently shifts his pint to and fro "—I could use the extra hours, is all. And I don't mind some heavy lifting. So if you wanted it to go faster, or if you ever wanted to take the day off, I could come in. That's all."

August glances at him, asks, "You need money?"

"Who doesn't?" Robin snorts, and August chuckles, nodding.

"So true." He sips his beer again and offers, "I'd swap a weekend shift with you, but I know you won't take it."

Not a chance, not ever.

Robin shakes his head, says, "My son—" and August waves him off.

"I know. She's still only giving you weekends?"

Robin blows out a breath and nods, sighs, "She is. I've told her I have days free, but she says he has daycare, he has his routine and his little friends. And I have deep respect for naptime and all that, but I don't see how a day or two a week with his dad would throw his whole life into shambles."

"You want my advice?" August asks, as Robin lifts his beer and takes a deep swig.

"Mm."

"Tell her again."

Robin snorts a little, and August lets the suggestion land there between them for a moment. He probably should. She'd taken his impromptu field trip yesterday morning rather well – it helped that he'd called the daycare and told them Roland would be with him for the morning. He may not have cleared the whole thing with Marian, but at least he'd been responsible about it. So maybe August is right. Maybe it's about time for another tense phone call with his son's mother, another reminder that it's been months of him playing on her terms, and he's more than proven himself worthy of some more reasonable visitation.

August interrupts his thoughts, changing the topic with, "But if you're just looking to pick up another hour or two, I'll take you up on the help with the deliveries. It goes a hell of a lot faster with two, that's for sure."

"Thanks, man."

"Yeah, of course," August dismisses, taking the last swallow of his beer and shifting off the stool with a grunt. "And you should talk to Ruby. Her friend Tink is supposed to be playing here next week, but she got in a car accident over the weekend. Mostly okay, but she has a broken hand, so she's looking for a guitarist on short notice. You're good – maybe she'll throw you a bone."

He should be focusing on the offer – not only work, but work doing what he loves – but he's stuck for a moment, thinking maybe he's misheard.

"Tink?" he questions, brows knitting.

"It's a nickname. Her last name is… Tinkerson? Tinkman?" His forehead wrinkles for a moment as he tries to recall, but then he gives up and shrugs. "Something. I've got it on the performance schedule in the back; Ruby only ever calls her Tink. I'm not sure if she's paying, but I know she has other gigs, so it'd get you out there, at least."

Robin nods, tells him thanks for letting him know, and makes a mental note to talk to Ruby about it tomorrow night.

**.::.**

He calls Marian the next morning. Or rather, asks her to call him when she has a break. It seems maybe a bit rude, springing this on her during her work day, but then he thinks of the time she showed up in the middle of _his_ work, at his _new job_ no less, and asked him to start paying child support, so he thinks maybe she's owed the inconveniences of shared custody this time.

She calls just around noon, probably on her lunch, and catches him in the middle of some much-needed laundry. He holds the phone in one hand, loads dirty clothes into the washer with the other, and pleads his case: It's been half a year since The Incident, Roland has adjusted well to split custody, and he thinks he should be able to have him in the daytime more often. Marian is not immediately agreeable to the whole thing, not that he'd expected she would be.

"I don't see why it can't be a more regular thing," Robin reasons to Marian as he scoops a handful of socks from his hamper and drops them in. "He had a good time with me last week, didn't he? And Monday, at the science center?"

"Well, yes, but—" she starts, and he knows that tone, knows it means she's going to argue some more, so he presses ahead.

"I think I've more than proven that I'm fit to parent him, Marian. And weekends are great, but it's not enough. And I know with my job we can't do any sort of week here, week there kind of arrangement, but I'm free most days until the afternoon. Why can't I have him? You'd save on daycare, and I'd get to see him more often. At least consider letting me keep him through Mondays; I'm off Mondays—"

"Can I get a word in, please?" she interjects, exasperated, and Robin dumps in the last of his shorts and lets the lid fall on the washer with a bit of clang.

"Sorry," he says, with a deep breath in, and then out. "Go ahead."

"You have lessons on Mondays," she points out, and Robin is glad he's already closed the washer or he might have let it slam good and proper at that ridiculous excuse for a reason.

"One," he says firmly. "At seven PM."

"I can't guarantee I'll always be able to pick him up by then—"

"I can handle it," Robin insists, punching the button for warm wash and turning the knob on the front to start. He thinks of the last time he'd had Roland during a lesson, and says without thinking, "Regina can watch him."

"Does she know that?" Marian questions, and he can almost see the doubtful face she's making, the one he used to think was rather cute. It's less cute in his recollection, now.

"I can ask her if she'll watch him," he amends, realizing belatedly he never added soap to the wash. He curses internally, grabs the Tide from the shelf and yanks the washer open again.

"I don't want to impose on—"

"You're not," he cuts her off. "I am. Marian, please. I shouldn't have to beg for time with my child. I did a stupid thing, I know that, and believe me, I have felt the consequences of it. But I want to be with my son. Give me one more day, for now, just one. Think about the others."

She sighs heavily, and then there's silence on the other end of the line as he measures soap and dumps it in, lets the lid fall back down and punches the start button to get the cycle flowing again.

And then Marian says, "Check with the neighbor, and we'll see how Mondays go for a while," and his heart leaps.

It's only Monday, only a few more hours than he's getting now. It's not enough, not truly, but it's a start. So he tells her, "Thank you," and "I'll let you know by the weekend."

And for once, when he hangs up with his ex, he feels like he's won.

**.::.**

Chocolate.

There is chocolate, everywhere.

Every day, chocolate.

On Tuesday it had been a Maya Gold bar, left on her desk midday while she was grabbing lunch with Kathryn to discuss what was happening with David (not much, or nothing good, anyway – talk of counseling, talk of separation; Regina had felt a lick of guilt at how glad she was to have someone else's problems to focus on for an hour instead of her own). She'd frowned, and slipped it into her purse, left it there for the rest of the day.

It's still on her desk in the den, at home.

On Wednesday a handful of Reese's cups arranged into a little pyramid next to her keyboard had greeted her first thing. It's not all that unusual, Sidney thinking of her, Sidney bringing her something. A treat. He's done that before – spent how long refilling the break room candy bowl with these very same sweets not a month ago? And she did say she wanted things to go back to normal between them, but he used to space this stuff out a little bit better. Every now and then, a sweet treat. Every now and then, an extra cup of coffee.

Still, she has a weakness, a terrible weakness, for these particular candies. She drops two in Mal's office, two in Kathryn's, and eats the other four herself, one by one as she works on her latest pitch.

Thursday, Sidney had been out of the office all day, in meetings with Leo and another potential client. Regina had been too relieved by his absence to even manage a good brood about the fact that they haven't even closed the deal yet, and Sidney seems to have the account locked up.

Mal, on the other hand, had had plenty to say about it, perching herself on the edge of Regina's desk and growling about favoritism, and "the sexist boys' club that is the management in this place," and how fucking unfair it is that the golden boy gets first crack at every lucrative client when the two of them have been working their asses off for years.

Regina had somehow managed not to notice the tube of chocolate covered espresso beans until Mal swiped them from beside her monitor, gave them a rattle and asked, "Do you mind?"

Regina had shaken her head, and resigned herself to another uncomfortable conversation with Sidney in the very near future.

And now it's Friday, and there's a Godiva chocolate raspberry bar sitting on her keyboard. Bad enough, he's left her another gift. Even worse, that he's decided to attempt to woo her back by indulging her sweet tooth – something she certainly doesn't need to be doing, considering her mother had called last night and summoned her to another coffee date this weekend (oh sure, it had been phrased like an invitation, but "I was thinking we could have coffee together this weekend; it's been so long since we've seen each other" can't be turned down without a considerable fallout of passive aggressive guilt).

But the worst of all, she thinks as she lifts the candy off her desk, runs her thumb over the gold foil of the logo on the wrapper, is that she had almost bought this very same chocolate bar the night before. She'd been at the bookstore, picking up something new for herself, a few items off the recommended summer reading list for Henry's school, and there they'd been at the checkout. It's another weakness, another indulgence – she's partial to dark chocolate, likes the sweet tartness of the raspberry filling in contrast, and she'd been tempted. So very tempted.

But she'd had more than her fair share of sweets this week, between the ones Sidney was leaving for her and the box of Junior Mints she'd scarfed down at the movies with Henry on Wednesday night. So no sooner than she'd grabbed the candy bar, she'd found herself putting it back. She'd still had the Maya Gold at home, anyway.

Didn't need it.

And now, here it is. Of all the things he could have chosen for her today, it was the one thing she'd denied herself the day before.

Her stomach twists and somersaults, a little coil of cold dread winding up her spine, and she can't figure out if it's because of Sidney, or the recurrent temptation of dark chocolate and sweet raspberry.

She taps the candy bar against her fingers anxiously, frowns hard at it, and tells herself she won't leave here tonight until she's shut down the chocolate factory. She's not going to do it now, not first thing. She'll wait this time, catch him at the end of the day. That way if there are any hard feelings, they won't be lingering at the office.

Regina slips the candy into her purse; she won't eat it today. She's keyed up and anxious, and she knows, just knows, that if Mother forgets the terms of their reconciliation (which she probably will) and makes some comment about how something fits, or how she looks a little puffy, or how she should really cut back on the sweets (which she probably will), she'll spend the whole of her Saturday cursing herself for her lack of self-restraint. She'll eat it tomorrow night, maybe, if things go well.

Friday flies by, and before Regina knows it, it's nearly 3pm, and Sidney had mentioned something about taking a summer Friday and leaving early, so she bites the bullet and searches him out.

He's still in his office, but just barely – packing up his briefcase as she walks over and gives a little knock on the glass before popping her head into his office.

"Hi," she greets, and he looks up at her and grins.

"Hello, Regina."

"I wanted to talk to you."

He asks her what about, and she tries to keep things light. Casual. Friendly. Tries to match his amiable tone (aside from the daily chocolate delivery, things have gotten back to normal surprisingly well – he'd been sullen on Monday, but the rest of the week he's been his usual cordial self; She's been thanking heaven for small favors).

"Nothing major," she dismisses, before telling him, "I've just about hit my sugar quota for the month, that's all. So if you could ease up on the chocolate...?"

For a moment he looks a little sheepish, and then he explains, "You said you didn't want everyone to know. I figured this was more discrete than flowers."

His phrasing gives her pause, makes her wonder if she'd still be getting daily blooms if she hadn't insisted on calling off the dating side of things.

She smiles a little, but it's forced, she can feel the tension in it as she says, "You're right, but it's still... not very coworker-ly." He tilts his head a little, like a confused puppy, and she adds, "Nobody else is leaving me chocolate every day. I said I wanted to keep things professional, remember?"

"Of course," he agrees, smiling blithely again, and saying, "I'm sorry. No more daily candygrams."

Well, that was easy. She lets out a breath and nods, her smile shifting into something more genuine.

"Thank you. From me, _and_ my waistline."

She realizes too late that it was the entirely wrong thing to say to Sidney as he rushes to assure her, "Your waistline has nothing to worry about," sweeps his gaze up and down her frame quickly, before settling on her face again and saying quietly, "You're so beautiful."

Regina fights the urge to squirm.

"Professional," she reminds, and he seems to catch himself, shaking his head a little and closing his briefcase, grasping the handle.

"Right, of course," he says, repeating, "Of course. I'll keep the compliments to myself during business hours."

She wants to tell him to keep them to himself during all hours, but she doesn't want to make this even more uncomfortable than it already is.

So she just smiles, and nods, drums her fingers against the doorjamb and says, "Have a good weekend."

"You, too," Sidney tells her, closing the gap between them.

She steps back out of the doorway, expects him to head toward reception, but he doesn't. He turns toward her instead, heading for Leo's office no doubt – but he cuts the turn close, his fingertips brushing the back of her hand as he walks by. She twitches at the surprise moment of contact, but it's fleeting, over before it begins, and then he's saying, "Enjoy your weekend," over his shoulder as he leaves her behind.

**.::.**

Robin brings Regina flowers. Well, a flower. It doesn't seem right, bringing her an actual bouquet, seems too forward after what happened between them a week ago (especially with not so much as a word or wave between them aside from his text on Monday; he's been trying to honor her request for space, he truly has, although he supposes his mission tonight makes that a moot point). So he brings her a single flower, one measly purple tulip – he'd thought about a rose, but that seemed too romantic. One of those big colorful daisies, but it didn't seem quite elegant enough for her. So, a tulip. Simple, but pretty.

He shows up on her doorstep with it on Friday evening, before he heads out to pick up Roland. Has been watching her house from his own front porch for an embarrassing amount of time, waiting for the lights to flick on. Has called Marian and pushed back his pick-up of Roland by twenty minutes, and justified it by telling himself that if Regina says yes, then he can just tell Marian tonight when he gets there, and maybe they can pack Roland some extra things and he can stay the long weekend straight off.

So he needs to be quick about things, needs to not linger, and needs to not be so bloody pathetic that he waits two days to ask her just so he can do it in person.

He should've called.

But he didn't, and now he's here, knocking on her door, and waiting. It's not long before she pulls it open, standing there like a breath of fresh air in a snug black pencil skirt and white blouse that leaves her arms bare. She's gotten some sun, he thinks – he hadn't really noticed last week, and she'd been so pale when she was sick. But she looks good, healthy, beautiful.

She smiles when she see him, but it's a little tight, a little awkward, a little bewildered.

"Robin, hi…" she greets, tilting her head, and he finds he has to try very hard not to focus on those rose-painted lips of hers, and thoughts of the last time they'd been face to face. Her gaze drops to the tulip he'd forgotten he was holding, and goes a little bit guarded. "What's this?"

"Oh, uh—" he lifts it, offers it up to her "—it's a rather sad little tulip is what it is."

She smirks, then presses her lips together to hide it, but her eyes are still smiling.

And then he cocks it all up by saying, "I was hoping we could talk," and she shuts back down, drops her gaze, shakes her head, gives a dry little laugh.

"Do we have to?" she asks softly, and he realizes just what exactly she thinks he's here to talk _about_.

"Not about us," he assures. "I think it was pretty clear before any of that… started, where it was going. I knew what it was, and that's fine."

Her shoulders relax, a breath of relief blowing out of her, and she finally reaches out, takes the tulip from his grasp and twirls it a little in her own. "Good. Thank you. Then I can take your sad little tulip."

Robin chuckles, slips his hands into his pockets, and when she asks what it is he wanted to talk about, he has to shake himself back to the task at hand. He can moon over her later; right now, he's running late.

"Oh, just, um… Y'know, Roland couldn't stop talking about spending time with you last week," he says, overly fond, laying it on a bit thick. "He said you were the best babysitter in the whole world."

She laughs (he loves when she laughs), and lifts a brow, telling him, "You're a terrible liar."

"I'm not lying!" he insists. "He wants me to buy him that cookie book."

"Fine," she gives him with a little roll of her eyes. "Maybe you're not lying, but you want something." She holds up the flower, and says, "You brought me a sad little tulip."

"Okay. Yes. I do," he admits, ducking his head a little, and lifting a hand to scratch at the back of his neck. He looks up at her, gives her what he hopes is a charming smile, and tells her, "I need a favor."

Regina leans against the door jamb, lifts the tulip to give it a little sniff as she asks, "What's up?" and he realizes they've had this whole conversation with him on the porch while she stands in the open door, letting the air con bleed out. She hasn't made a move to invite him in, and while that makes sense, he doesn't think it necessarily bodes well for what he's about to ask.

He probably shouldn't ask, shouldn't put her out; Marian is right. But he's here now, and the answer is always no if you don't ask, so he bites the bullet and makes the request:

"Could you watch him? On Monday nights?"

Her brow ticks up. "Every Monday night?"

Right. This was a bad plan. He winces as he says, "Yes. Maybe not always – and not for the full hour necessarily, just until Marian can get here from work. I'm trying to wear her down on letting me have Mondays and she's worried she won't be able to pick him up in time before Henry's lessons."

"Oh," she says simply, kindly. And then she shrugs and says, "Sure, I can do that."

Robin feels a cautious rush of relieved surprise, his mouth curving. "You're sure? I don't want to put you out."

"It's fine," she assures him. "You have my kid for an hour once a week. No reason I can't have yours."

"I can pay you," Robin assures, because it's babysitting, and he ought to.

But she brushes him off, waves the hand that isn't still clutching her tulip and says, "Don't be silly. It's Roland."

"You're sure?"

"You already asked me that," she smiles. "Really, if it'll help you out, it's no problem. I've dumped Henry on you plenty of times."

"I like Henry; it's no bother," Robin insists, and Regina points her tulip at him and says, _Exactly_. He nods, says, "Right," and then, "I've got to go pick him up for the weekend – it's only supposed to be through Sunday this time, but if I can talk her into the extra day…?"

"I'm free Monday night," she assures. "Just let me know."

"I will," he tells her, reaching out and grabbing her arm gently, giving it a little squeeze as he says sincerely, "Thank you."

She gives him the obligatory, "You're welcome," and then they say their goodnights, and Robin finds himself bounding down her steps with a particular spring in his step.

One more day might not be much, but to him, it's a hell of a lot.

**.::.**

She should not be so charmed by a single tulip.

Should not be fishing out a little bud vase for it and trimming the stem down carefully, filling the vase with water and a little bit of the flower food from the packet she hadn't bothered to open when she brought Sidney's bouquet home on Monday.

But she is, and she does, and she reminds herself that this is exactly why she's trying to put some distance between herself and Robin. Because he brought her a single, sad little tulip (it's not that sad, really – it's purple, and soft, and pretty, and will look lovely in this tiny vase), and she's gotten all fluttery about it.

And because he'd looked so good in that white t-shirt on her porch, all puppy dog eyes, worrying she'd say no to watching Roland so he could get an extra day with him. Ridiculous, not even a question.

Also not great for actually maintaining that space she was just thinking about, but, well… they can swap kids and call it a day, they don't have to actually spend all that much time together. It'll be good. It'll be fine.

She drops the flower into the bud vase, and brings it to the living room, sets it on the coffee table there right next to the massive bouquet of roses that's starting to wilt. The roses are overpowering, dwarfing the little tulip, and she thinks for a second about tossing them, but there's a bit of life left in them, still.

So she settles for moving the tulip, bringing it over to the round table between the armchairs instead. It fits better there anyway, seems less sad, less small. Just right.

Regina runs her thumb along the petals, and then pushes Robin from her mind as she heads for the kitchen.


	26. Chapter 26

Robin is in her garden.

It's Saturday morning, not even breakfast, and Robin and Roland are in her garden.

Regina peeks through the curtains of the front window, mug of coffee in hand, and frowns. She's just stepped out of the shower, is still in her robe, not really decent for the public, but… Robin and Roland are in her garden. Crouched on their knees and frowning at her flowers.

The curiosity is overwhelming.

She adjusts her robe, tightens the belt, and then takes the few paces over to the front door and steps out onto the porch.

"Are you here to steal my flowers?" she teases, and both heads snap up, Robin looking a little guilty, Roland grinning at her. "Because I'll know if a single bloom goes missing."

She probably won't. She knows her garden well, but not so well that she notices each and every petal and leaf.

"No, not stealing," Roland tells her, pushing to his feet (his knees are dirty now, hands too, and she notices he's still in a matching pajama set, soft white cotton with little foxes printed all over shorts and shirt alike). "Pulling!"

Regina's brows shoot up, and she looks to Robin expectantly. He grimaces, and then explains, "Weeding. Not pulling. I did lose that race, after all."

It takes her a second to remember what he's talking about, and then the recollection dawns on her. He's supposed to weed her garden for the rest of the month. She'd forgotten their little wager entirely after the whole, well, everything else that happened that night.

Roland has been ambling his way around and up the steps, and she looks down at him as he makes it to the porch.

"Is Daddy making you do his dirty work?" she questions, and he giggles that sweet giggle that makes her smile automatically, shaking his head.

"Nuh uh," he says, and then, "But he said it's too early to play with you. Just that we could look at your flowers and help them."

Regina "ah"s, tipping her smile toward Robin for a moment. He shrugs, and smiles back. It _is_ early, only just past seven; Henry's still sound asleep. (The early mornings are one thing she certainly doesn't miss about having a very young child.)

"Well, I hope you weren't pulling anything important," she says with feigned sternness, and Roland goes serious and shakes his head again slowly.

"No, only ugly things," he assures, and Regina laughs.

"You don't have any flowers that look like weeds planted in here, do you?" Robin asks her; he still hasn't moved from the edge of the flower bed. "With my luck, I'd yank out your prized straggly green thing."

She has to suppress a chuckle as she assures, "No, no ugly flowers. I trust your judgment." She watches his expression shift just a little, appreciative in a way he maybe shouldn't be. She was just talking about flowers… And then there's a little tug at her robe, and she frowns as she looks down. "Roland, no, your hands are all dirty," she chides mildly, wiping at the little smudge he's left on the grey fabric.

"Sorry," he frowns, dimples popping in those soft cheeks before he says, "But I'm thirsty. Do you have juice?"

Robin pushes to his feet then, finally, grunting, "Roland, we're not here to demand Regina's juice," over Regina's soft, _I do_.

"It's alright; I can spare a cup of juice," she dismisses, watching as Robin frowns and looks between her and the empty place beyond the rail where he can't quite see Roland. He's in running shorts and a white t-shirt. Probably his pajamas, too, she thinks, and then she resolutely doesn't think, offering instead, "Coffee for you?"

That frown melts away, replaced with a grateful expression, and a sincere, "Bless you."

The morning is warm – already into the low 80s, even this early, but it is thankfully not terribly humid. Still, she asks him, "Hot or over ice?", figuring if he's about to pass some time bent over in the sun, he might want something cooler.

Sure enough, he tells her, "Iced, if it's not too much trouble."

"It's no trouble," she assures, and then she's looking at Roland, telling him, "You stay out here, mister. No dirt in the house."

Off his sweet and smiling, "Okay," she heads back inside, asking herself what exactly she thinks she's doing. Yes, Robin had lost the bet. And yes, her garden probably could do with a good weeding – she was thinking of doing just that later today. But that doesn't mean she has to provide refreshments, and in her bathrobe no less.

She reminds herself that it's not as though she'd offered; Roland had asked. And sure, she didn't have to suggest coffee to Robin, but she knows him well enough to know he's more of a night owl by nature, so surely he was woken by his dimple-cheeked, sunny-faced little boy long before he'd have liked to be up, and, well, she'd made a whole pot anyway.

She's not sure _why_ , considering that about four hours from now she'll be sitting down for coffee with her mother; surely she hadn't needed a whole pot beforehand. But that's four hours from now, and truth be told, she's up a little earlier than she'd planned on, too.

She'd woken practically with the sun, had lain in bed willing herself to close her eyes and go back to sleep while simultaneously mulling over what she'd wear today. Things have been good between her and her mother since their last coffee date. And by good, she means scarce but with marginal guilt. The occasional text exchange, but nothing more. Still, the thought of another one-on-one date with her has Regina in anxious knots. The first one had gone relatively well, so this is the make-or-break-it meeting, she thinks.

Mother had played nice for an hour, had been cordial for a few weeks, but now, well… Now, they'll see. See if she really does want change, if she can spend another hour being civil rather than unkind, see if she can stick to the guidelines Regina had set before.

It's that last thought that had made her think of clothing. Mother had promised – Regina had demanded, but still, Cora had agreed – not to make comments about Regina's body – a body that she feels quite comfortable with at the moment, truth be told. Oh sure, she could lose a pound here or there, but she hasn't been overindulging _too_ much (Sidney's chocolate aside), so everything fits well at the moment.

The closet is her oyster, so to speak, and she thinks she can comfortably choose anything she wants and not feel pinched or cinched or stuffed. And maybe it's asking for it, maybe it's begging for trouble, but she wants to wear something a little less… Mother.

Nothing wild, nothing too casual, but she has a pair of neat black dress shorts that she bought on a whim and has had precious few excuses to wear; she thinks maybe today is a suitable occasion. It's just coffee, with her mother. Something a normal person wouldn't think twice about dressing for, but then her relationship with Cora is anything but normal. So she thinks she'll wear shorts. The black shorts, and a blouse – she's been debating all morning if she wants to go with something sleeveless or not.

She has options either way, can dress the shorts up a little or down some, depending on what she chooses. She's thinking about her options again as she pours orange juice into a small cup, and dumps ice into a much larger one. The coffee is hot, so she pours slowly, adds more ice when the first batch melts – it's going to end up a weak brew, but it's free for him, so he can live with it.

When she reemerges out into the day, Robin and Roland have stopped weeding, both of them sitting on the middle porch step, leaning in close and whispering to each other about something. It sends a piercing, unexpected stab of pain through her heart that wears the name _Daniel,_ and for a moment she misses him so much it takes her breath away.

They don't happen often, these moments of deep grief, but when they do, they're gutting. _Unfair_ , is all she can think. Unfair that Henry never got to have a moment like this, unfair that she never got to bring coffee and juice to her son and would-be husband. And unfair to Daniel that she feels a brief bubble of relief at having pain that comes from somewhere other than the man on her porch step. The bubble pops quickly, though, leaves her standing there letting out all the cold air as she clutches two cold cups and tries to take a deep breath.

Robin has heard the door open, has to have, and it's him looking up from Roland and turning around in search of her that finally snaps Regina into action. But not before he gets a good look at her, apparently, because his face goes from blithely curious to shamefully guilty, and it takes a moment for her to realize why. To realize he thinks the reason for her apparently-visible upset is him.

She schools her face into something she hopes is less breathless as she takes the few steps toward them, gives him a tight smile and even tighter, "Not you," as she hands him his coffee and Roland his juice.

Robin reaches for her hand as she straightens, grasps her fingers with his and gives her a concerned frown that melts into a look of sympathetic recognition when she glances quickly between him and Roland. He opens his mouth to say something, and she finds she really doesn't want to know what. It's old pain, even in the moments it feels fresh; there's nothing to say, and if he's sweet and comforting, she'll just hurt even more, for other reasons.

So she shakes her head, says, "Please don't," and then "Help yourself if you need refills; I'm going to get dressed."

He swallows, and stares at her for a moment, fingers warm against hers, face pinched with kind concern. His thumb rubs once over the emerald ring on her left hand, a gift from her father that she wonders now if he's always thought came from someone else. And then his fingers slide away as he murmurs, "Alright," lifts his coffee slightly and says, "Thank you."

Regina nods, and combs her fingers absently through the silky softness of Roland's curls when he echoes his father with a, "Thanks, Regina."

And then she slips back inside, climbs the stairs, and sits on the edge of her bed. Digs her fingers into the covers and waits for the ache to pass.

**.::.**

It's funny the way you can know things about a person and not think on them too much. Not think on what they mean, how they color someone's world. How you can unintentionally jab them right in their soft places just by living your own life in their presence.

Robin knows, has known since his first time in her house (second time, he supposes, if we're being technical) that Regina had lost Henry's father. Knows she keeps little bits of him close – that Boston College sweatshirt she's worn until it's gone faded and thin, the picture on the mantel, that ring she wears on her left hand, and countless other things, no doubt, that he's no idea of. He knows she has loss in her past, but she's always told him it was old pain, put behind her as much as such things can be.

When she'd told him that she wants him to be around for Henry, he'd seen a shadow of the ache she carries over the hole in her son's life, in hers, but he's never seen it hit her quite the way it seems to have this morning. And nothing had happened to bring it on, nothing out of the ordinary. One minute, he'd been whispering with Roland about just why they should not pick flowers from Regina's own garden to give to her, and the next he'd glanced up to see her looking like she'd been kicked in the belly.

He hasn't seen her since her hasty retreat, the house quiet and seemingly too-still. He knows it's his imagination, is sure she's inside puttering around doing whatever she does on a Saturday morning, but from outside there are no signs of life, and it's as if the whole house is cloaked in her sadness.

Or maybe that's just him.

Still, he wants to do something, anything, to ease that ache. She'd been polite today, but a bit wary, and he remembers the way she'd hovered in the door last night when he'd brought her that tulip. She has been cordial, but not invitingly so, and he knows better than to overstep. To try too hard to comfort and push them toward something she's said she doesn't want from him right now, or can't handle, or what all. But he'd told her he'd try to think of things he could do with Henry, and as he sips his coffee and waits for Roland to finish his juice, he resolves to do just that.

He'll see about Orioles tickets, maybe – it'll have to be the cheap seats, but he doesn't think Henry will mind. Or maybe he'll start taking him to the park once a week, teach him how to play football – the proper kind. Robin's not great at it, but he's not terrible either, and if it would help in any way to keep that gut-punched look off Regina's face, he'll do it and do it gladly.

They're back in the garden again, yanking up stubby green trespassers, when he hears the music. The piano, carrying out in patches – he can't hear every note, but enough to know that it's not something modern. More Beethoven than Bareilles, he thinks. One of the showpieces she grew up playing, no doubt. It sounds a bit moody – something relatively uptempo but in a minor key, and he finds himself wishing he could hear it properly, wishing for an open window instead of the solid glass pane between them.

But it's a warm morning, he's already starting to sweat here on his knees in the dirt, and his iced coffee is fairly more coffee than iced at this point. He'd never begrudge her the air-con for a chance to hear her run through a sonata or two.

"Daddy, this one?" Roland asks, pointing to what Robin is fairly certain is intentional greenery.

"No, let's leave that one, my boy," he says, grasping a spindly shoot from between two stalks as he does.

Roland does as he's told, and Robin watches him for a moment, smiles, and thanks his lucky stars that he and his son still have each other, even if it's only on the weekends.

And then he reminds himself one more time to pick a day this week for Henry.

**.::.**

It took a dose of Rachmaninoff with a Beethoven chaser, but she'd managed to shake her dark cloud by the time Henry was up and about. Made him toaster waffles while she had yogurt and granola, and a third cup of coffee, and tried to be appreciative for all the things they _do_ have instead of the one thing – person – they don't. A roof, and full bellies, and clothes, and their health. Plenty to be thankful for, even on the hard mornings.

Plenty to have her feeling nervous and antsy, too, on this particular Saturday. The prospect of time with her mother is still not an overly welcome one, even if they _are_ trying, even if she _is_ trying to be hopeful.

She'd gone with a short-sleeved blouse, a silky one with a wide crew neck and a nice drape, and an abstract black and white pattern. Had paired it with those black shorts, and a pair of sleek pumps, and a coral lip. She looks nice, she thinks. Very put together. The hair is a gamble – it had half-dried surprisingly well, her natural wave deciding to behave and look presentable today, and since that pleasant lack of humidity has lingered, she'd finished it off with a diffuser rather than blowing it out. If she was meeting anyone but her mother, she would feel fun, a little sassy, a lot confident.

But she _is_ meeting Mother, so instead she's fighting the urge to nibble at that coral lipstick anxiously as she makes her way into town.

The last place Regina had expected her mother to suggest for coffee was Grumpy's. It doesn't seem at all her style, and when Cora had said "We can go back to that place you like; hopefully that horrid little man won't be working again" Regina had suspected that her mother had only been trying to get her to agree to coffee at all. She'd been almost certain that in the intervening days she'd have gotten another call, a summons to the Club or to some snooty establishment that served everything out of matching cups, at the very least.

But it's ten minutes to eleven on Saturday morning, and Regina is pulling into the Grumpy's parking lot not having heard a peep from her Mother since they made their date.

She flips down the mirror above the driver's side, double checks that she hadn't scraped her teeth along her lip without thinking (she hadn't), runs her tongue over her teeth to make sure they're free and clear, too (unnecessary), and then she gives her waves one last scrunch and carefully places the one curl that doesn't want to sit quite right.

One deep breath in and out, and she's stepping out of the car.

Mother, of course, is already there. And Mother, of course, already has her coffee. And Mother, of course, is sitting at that same uncomfortable table with the view of the door, and gives Regina an immediate once over of appraisal that even with her years of practice, Regina cannot read.

Regina's nerves squirm and wriggle inside her guts, but she forces a pleasant smile in greeting and goes to order her coffee anyway.

"Hey, sister," Leroy greets her, dropping his voice to murmur, "When she came in, I saved the last of those raspberry scones for you. Thought maybe you could use one."

She chuckles weakly, and shakes her head, says, "Thanks, but trust me, if I sit down with baked goods, I'll get a lecture about carbs and the dangers of refined sugar and flour."

Leroy flicks his glance over to Cora and mutters something about not understanding why people have to suck all the fun out of life, and Regina thinks he doesn't know the half of it. And then she tells him quietly, "I'll take it to go; maybe I can stash it in my purse without her seeing it."

Leroy smiles – a rare sight, but a pleasant one – and says, "You got it."

It's one more small defiance in her morning, but it makes her feel good. In control, even though when it comes to Mother she so rarely is. And because she is apparently a glutton for punishment, she treats herself to a cortado this morning. It's milk, and it's small, so she risks both inciting comments about the very presence of dairy (even though Mother will no doubt have some in her own espresso) and running out halfway through their visit and having to fight from fidgeting.

But it's what she wants today, and she's already three cups in. The last thing she needs is another boat of coffee. In fact, she switches her order to decaf at the last second; she's already jittery enough.

While she waits for Leroy to pull the shot, she stuffs that scone into her purse, using the espresso machine and high countertop to block Cora's view of her as she does it.

But the second she sits in front of her mother, pleasant smile locked in place, Cora asks, "You didn't get anything to eat?" and Regina feels a cold prickle of suspicious adrenaline. Did she see?

"No," Regina lies, tracing her fingertip along the warm surface of her glass. "Neither did you."

"I ate at home," Cora dismisses, lifting her drink - a macchiato, from the look of it.

"So did I," Regina tells her, shifting a little on her seat. The metal is cold against her skin now, but it'll warm up soon, and she can just envision the red flush of the backs of her thighs after being stuck to it with her own body heat by the time this little coffee date is over. So she suggests, "Why don't we move to the arm chairs, Mother? This feels so… formal."

Cora casts a slightly distasteful look toward the plush chairs nearby, her lips pinching together, but she gives, says, "I suppose" with a little sigh that makes her feelings on said arm chairs fairly clear. And she then picks up and moves without another word, leaving her purse behind – a tactical measure that forces Regina to grab it along with her own, and her full coffee, lest she be accused of rudeness.

She has a moment as she carries two bags and a cup and saucer, a moment of clarity where she wonders why on earth she is even doing this. Even trying. Why she puts up with the games, the manipulations. And then she reminds herself that this is supposed to get them past those things. They are trying to mend.

So she blows her frustration out softly and crosses the few feet to where Cora has already settled into her chair, gingerly placing her coffee on the small table between the two chairs before handing her mother her purse.

"Oh, thank you, dear. I didn't realize I'd left it," Cora praises, and that's bullshit. But she follows it with, "You look lovely today, sweetheart," and Regina kicks herself for the way her spirits buoy with the compliment. Right up until Cora smacks her back down to earth with, "If a bit...casual."

"It's 85 degrees, Mother, and it's a Saturday," she replies, her voice clipped, as she settles herself into the empty chair, her purse on the ground at her feet, and her saucer onto the table before flipping her hair back out of where it's fallen slightly in her face and finishing, "I figured shorts were acceptable for coffee with my own mother."

She crosses her legs, lifts her coffee for a sip. But the warm, nutty flavor of her cortado goes acidic and bitter as Cora huffs a little, and chides, "There's no need to be snippy, Regina, and I simply meant that you'd neglected to do anything with your hair." She pauses for a half-second before she adds, "The shorts are rather flattering."

Regina wants to mutter _Don't sound so surprised,_ but it wouldn't do them any good _._

Instead, she says coolly, "I did do my hair, Mother. Product and a blow dryer and everything. Every now and then, I figure I ought to embrace the curls Daddy gave me."

She doesn't know why she thought that would be a good excuse, a good tactic. Her mother has about as much respect for her father as she does for, well, what's something just above the help? (It's not true, that's not true, but it _feels_ that way sometimes.)

So it comes as no surprise that Cora is dismissive as ever, saying haughtily. "I can't imagine why; you look so much more put together without them."

She wants to scream. She's been here five minutes and already, she wants to scream. Would love to point out that she was damned from both sides - Cora's own hair waves too if she doesn't do anything with it. But it wouldn't help. It wouldn't get her anywhere; it would only start an argument. And somehow it would be _she_ who started it. Not Cora, never Cora. It would be her.

So she doesn't say the things she wants to. Doesn't say anything for a moment, just sips her coffee slowly, and then says very clearly, and very evenly, "You're not exactly honoring our agreement right now."

Cora's brows rise halfway to her hairline, a look of disbelieving confusion on her face, and Regina should have known. Should have known this wouldn't last.

"Our agreement?" Cora questions; Regina reminds herself to keep her temper under wraps. It wouldn't do to have a tantrum – Mother would never respond favorably to that.

"You agreed not to criticize my looks," Regina reminds her. "That was part of the terms—"

But she's interrupting already, waving a hand and scoffing. "Oh for goodness sake, Regina, can you not talk about us meeting for coffee like it's a court date? Honestly, I don't know how I managed to raise such a sensitive daughter."

And there's that urge to scream again. Because how on _earth_ could someone who had been raised under such intense scrutiny and criticism _ever_ have ended up sensitive – which she's _not_ , not really, she has a tough outer shell, damnit, and walls around her that might as well have turrets they're so well-fortified, and she is not _sensitive_ , damnit. She's not.

She's raw today, though, she realizes. Her moment over Daniel this morning has left her vulnerable, and her already frazzled nerves had talked her into crazy acts of rebellion, little things meant to push, and needle, and provoke her mother, and well, Cora has risen swimmingly to the bait, hasn't she?

She should have known better than this. Should have just worn a nice dress, and blown her hair out, and maybe then she could have had a goddamn cortado in _peace_.

But they're in public, this is in public. So all she says is a very pointed, " _Mother_."

"I agreed not to criticize your figure," Cora concedes, although it hardly sounds like a concession – more like a reminder, or a lecture. "I wasn't aware that meant I wasn't allowed an opinion on anything else about your comportment."

She thinks of her mother biting back the urge to tell her not to slouch the last time they'd met and thinks darkly, _Yes, you were._

"Can we change the subject please?" Regina asks her, all tension, all repressed fury. Her fingers are trembling with it, ever so slightly, and she presses them hard against the glass in her hand.

To her utter surprise and relief, Mother gives on this one, too. Says, "Fine," and then, "Are we going to be seeing Henry for his birthday?"

Regina takes the out, and tells herself that Mother is Mother, and expecting her not to pick is like expecting grass not to grow, but at least she's being somewhat cooperative today. She moved over here, she's changing topic. Baby steps.

So she draws a slightly deeper breath than necessary in an attempt to clear her head, and then says, "We're having a party for his friends at our place on his actual birthday, but I was thinking maybe we could have dinner somewhere with you and Daddy on Sunday?"

"Dinner somewhere?" Cora questions. "You don't want to just come over to the house, like usual?"

"Well, the house is _somewhere_ , Mother," she drawls, "but no, I was thinking it might be nice to do something a little fancier. Make him feel special."

"Is eleven a special birthday?" Cora muses, not unkindly, but it grates at Regina. He's her son; every birthday is special.

"Ten was special," Regina tells her, reminding, "But when I said we should do something fancy for him, you said you thought ten was too young."

"Eleven isn't much older."

"Oh for God's sake, Mother, why can't we just take him to the Club? He's been there before; you know he's a very well-behaved child."

"The Club is hardly special; like you said, he's been there before."

Regina exhales, sets her half-finished cortado back onto its saucer, and presses her fingertips firmly to the budding ache behind her eyebrow for a moment. It's a pitiful show of weakness, but she needs to get her anger under control before it gets the best of her and she makes a fool of herself and embarrasses them both.

"It's special for Henry," Regina says deliberately. "He's not there every other week like you and Daddy. The Club is still a place we go for special occasions – which his birthday is. Besides, you complained that I wasn't there for the Fourth of July, so this way we'll have shown our faces at least—"

"I did not complain," Cora interrupts firmly. "I said you were missed. I said people asked after you. And I said I understood that you needed to have your own life. Don't put words in my mouth just to make yourself feel better, young lady."

"Don't speak to me like a child, Mother."

"Then don't act like one."

She doesn't want to scream anymore. She wants to cry. Can feel the hot prickle of it against the back of her eyeballs and thanks whatever higher power might be up there that said prickle doesn't turn into actual tears. This is going terribly.

The silence between them is suddenly thick, tense. Sludgy and toxic and sour. Regina breathes slowly, deliberately, tells herself over and over again not to break under her mother's words. Breathes again until she feels calmer. Less angry, and less hurt. Or at least, more in control of the anger, and the hurt.

Cora sips her macchiato and watches the other cafe patrons like she doesn't have a care in the goddamn world – or an emotion for that matter. (Sometimes Regina thinks she really doesn't.)

That silence stretches, and pulls, and Regina comes to the dreaded realization that she's going to have to be the one to end it. Mother won't. She just won't. They could sit there for another hour and Cora wouldn't say a word until Regina does. Would probably even get up and order another coffee, and then come sit right back down and wait some more. And delaying the inevitable will only make things worse.

She feels shame, and defeat, her voice soft but steady when she says, "I'm sorry, Mother. You're right; you didn't say that. I just… It felt like you were disappointed in me. That we didn't go. And I thought maybe if we went now, with Henry in his little suit and tie, and… I thought maybe it would… make up for that. I know how important appearances are to you, and I know that me not having made a single appearance at the Club all summer looks—"

"You're a successful young woman with a very busy life," Cora interrupts with her unnerving combination of coolness and faux warmth – a tone Regina still cannot figure out how she manages to pull off. "If you're too busy to come to the Club, that simply means I've done a good job raising you."

Gaslighting, she thinks. This is gaslighting. This whole conversation. She knows what this is, she's talked through this in therapy many times over.

She's calling Dr. Hopper the minute she gets home. Hell, she might even call him from the car. She can't do this right now, face her mother like this, alone, not with everything else going on in her life. Not with Mother not sticking to the rules they'd set this time. Conversations like this, they make her brain feel… taut. Like there's a slowly stretching rubber band inside her skull, straining and widening, pressing and pressing and waiting to snap back and shock her. She should not have tried to mend things with her mother without booking therapy the very next goddamned day. She should have _known_ the relative ease of their last coffee date was just a set-up to warm her up to the whole idea. She is so, so stupid.

"Regina, dear, you seem like you're under a lot of stress," Cora says, warmer now, but Regina doesn't trust it. Can't. She's not being kind today, she's playing angles.

Still, Regina answers with a terse, but not quite impolite, "I am."

To say the least.

"Well, then the Club is fine, sweetheart. Whatever you want, we'll do."

Regina feels her breath whoosh out in relief, and hates herself a little for it. She's gotten her way, and Mother got to give it to her, _out of the kindness of her heart_ and _for Regina's own sake_. Hook, line, and sinker, she's been baited and reeled in and left to die in a boat somewhere. And she's fucking grateful for it, even though she _knows_ better.

And she has to say, "Thank you, Mother. I appreciate that," because anything less would be ungrateful, and she is not ungrateful. But she is tired now. Mentally exhausted and after only how long? She sneaks a glance at her watch and thinks, God, not nearly long enough to be able to leave politely. They'll have to find something else to torture her with for another fifteen minutes at least.

"Are you still feeling lonely?" Cora asks, and oh God, any other topic. She's all spun sugar and spun lies, all cotton candy concern when she coos, "I know how hard it can be for you when you keep yourself isolated the way you do. I wish you'd just put yourself out there, dear; you're such a beautiful woman."

"I've been on a few dates," Regina answers, because it's true, and because it will shut her up. She's sure as hell not going into the details, though. "Nothing worth talking about, nothing that's going to go anywhere, but… I'm trying."

"Good," Cora smiles, one of those wide ones that shows teeth, "I'm glad, sweetheart. I just want to see you happy."

"I know," feels like ash on her tongue, and she lifts her now-cold cortado to wash it down. And then she changes the subject, because she cannot endure another minute of scrutiny. "How are _you_ , Mother? We always talk about my work – how's yours?"

It earns her a reprieve, gets Cora going on the charitable gala she's been working on, and the fundraiser for a local political race that she's working very hard to influence. Regina knows all the right responses here, knows how to feign interest, and deliver praise. It's almost soothing, the drivel of high society, her Mother's careful preening. Has that rubber band going slacker, looser, less ominous.

By the time Leroy wanders by and asks if he can get them another round – table service is something she knows they don't do here, but it's slow today, and maybe he's taking pity on her – she's almost feeling settled again. Still, she doesn't want to linger _too_ long, so she orders a single shot (another decaf, before her fingers get any shakier), and Mother gets a doppio.

"I have to say, this place leaves something to be desired in ambience, but they do make a very good espresso," Cora says once Leroy is out of earshot, and Regina is gobsmacked.

They _do_ make a very good espresso, but she never imagined she'd hear her mother sing its praises. She'd been ever more certain that suggesting Grumpy's was a tactical maneuver, lulling her into a false sense of security with the familiar locale so that she could jab her in her soft spots before she had a chance to put up defenses. It hadn't occurred to her that mother actually _liked_ the place.

"They do," Regina agrees. "And it's walking distance from the office, so I come down here now and then when I need a break in the afternoon. Or for lunch – they have some great soups."

"Maybe our next coffee date can be during the week," Cora suggests, and not a chance in hell. Regina forces her smile to stay blithe and content. "I'm sure I could find some time to drive down, and you know I haven't seen Leo in quite a while."

"Things are really busy right now," Regina excuses. "But maybe sometime. In the future."

When pigs fly.

But Cora is persistent, letting loose this little scoff, and arguing, "Surely they're not so busy you can't spare a few minutes for coffee with your mother – you just said you come here during the day now and then."

"Yes, _now and then,_ " Regina emphasizes, even though it's more like a few days a week. "And for a quick coffee and maybe a scone, not for an extended lunch."

"I never said anything about an extended lunch," her mother says, and Regina adds a sip of espresso to the nervous swirl that is kicking up in her belly. She cannot do a midday coffee break with her mother. She cannot go from Mother to the office; she needs time to recover after dates with Mother. "I'd be more than happy to meet you for a few minutes of coffee and conversation."

And that's just ridiculous, because unless her mother had actual business in this part of town (which, alright, she does from time to time, but Regina is certainly not bringing _that_ up), it's incredibly out of her way.

She colors her question with doubtful suspicion when she asks, "You'd drive all the way down here for a few minutes of coffee?"

"With my daughter?" Cora asks, like it's a no-brainer when not ten minutes ago she was arguing an eleventh birthday for Regina's son was nothing special. And then she says, "Yes," like it should be obvious, and Regina feels that rubber band start to pull again. When Cora adds a frosty, "But I'm beginning to think that's something in which you have no interest," she feels that headache behind her brow throb sharply again.

She should leave. Should just leave, but that would be rude. But isn't Mother being rude? Isn't this parade of guilt and condemnation rude? Why is Mother the only one who gets to be rude, she wonders, for about the one millionth time in her life.

But she's not rude, Regina, she's not, so she stays. But she's also not a doormat, and if they're going to mend their relationship, there's going to be honest and even-handedness, so she takes a deep breath and offers a weary, "Mother, why are you doing this?"

"Trying to have a conversation?" Cora asks innocently, and if fucking only.

"I _wish_ you were trying to have a conversation," she tells her, "instead of whatever this is. Because this is not how normal people have conversations." She knows that. She knows it. She is certain that this is not normal, even if it is so often _her_ normal. "This is not a conversation, this is criticism. From the minute I walked in, that's what it's been."

"Oh, honestly Regina, enough," Cora sighs, sounding more exasperated than she has any right to. "I'm your mother I have every right to—"

"No, you don't," because whatever it is, no, no, she doesn't. If it justifies this, she doesn't have the right.

"—have an opinion on your life," Cora finishes, and she sees the snap, the fire flare and then cool immediately in her Mother's eyes; she hates being interrupted, and Regina knows it. Sure enough, she immediately smacks down her protest with, "Oh yes I do, young lady," and it grates, it makes anger fizz up in her chest.

"I'm not a young lady—" she tries to defend in a low hiss that hopefully will not draw the attention of the handful of people chatting at various tables around the room.

But oh, it's perfectly fine if _Cora_ is the one who does the interrupting, because Regina barely gets started before she's being steamrolled and insulted: "No, you're an adult, this petulant display aside."

"I am not being petulant," she defends, fighting to keep her voice even, if tense, and low, if firm. "You have spent half this date picking me apart."

"You can't handle a single drop off criticism—" her mother starts, and _oh_ , that's rich, that's just beyond the pale.

Regina sets her coffee down with a little sloshing clatter and turns more fully to face her mother, tells her vehemently, "Oh, yes I can, Mother. Yes I can; you've made sure of it. I can handle a drop, it's the monsoon I have a hard time sitting through unbothered."

"Monsoon?" Cora laughs, rolls her eyes as she starts in with, "Regina, dear—"

But, "No, don't dismiss me again," Regina insists, because damnit she has a right to be heard. She doesn't have to put up with this. She should not be putting up with this. This does _not_ follow the rules – surely, they'd set a rule about this.

"You're being hysterical," her mother tells her, and Regina feels her cheeks flush.

"I am not." She not. She's _not_. She's trying to be calm, trying to be rational, even though her breath is quick and her every muscle feels tense and trembly. " _You_ are being _unfair._ "

It was the wrong thing to say.

The wrong thing, because Cora goes hard and flinty, straightens her spine and lectures, "Life's not fair. If it was, I wouldn't have to sit through my daughter refusing to even take five minutes from her workday – at the job I got her, don't you forget that—" And how could she ever, when Cora uses it as a weapon. But still, the mention of it makes Regina's chest burn, or maybe it's just the way that her mother is not speaking softly anymore, is making sure that others hear this, and she is mortified. "—to spend some time with her mother. I wouldn't have to sit through you accusing me of these horrible things when I am simply trying to give my input on your life – the life that _I_ built for you—"

"I built my own life—"

"Did you?" Cora's doppio is down now, too, and it's a battle of wills, head-on, gazes locked, and Regina hopes she looks tougher than she feels, because she feels very much like the ungrateful, bratty child she's supposed to be but knows she isn't as her mother lights into her with, "I don't recall you putting yourself in prep school, I don't recall you paying the down payment on that terrible house, I don't recall you getting yourself an interview with the Blanchard Group or Henry's interview at McDonogh."

" _Interviews_ ," Regina repeats. "Just the interviews. I got _myself_ the job, and _Henry_ got into the—"

"Without those interviews, you could have been the most qualified candidate in the world – which I'm sure you weren't, after two years out of the job market – and Henry could have been the most intelligent child in Baltimore – which his abysmal math grades attest is not the—"

"Do _not_ insult my son," Regina practically growls, because she _knows_ that one was on the list, and because Henry is her baby, her precious child, and she may sit here and listen to her mother list out her every fault and flaw and then some, but she draws the line at her son.

"It's not an insult if it's true, Regina," Cora replies smoothly, and Regina's hands are shaking, her heart _thudthudthud_ ing in her chest, in her throat, her ears. "The boy has no head for numbers."

She wants to say that that's because he has a head for words, for stories, but words and stories are frivolous pursuits in mother's eyes, and it won't help her case a damn bit. So she backs up a pace instead, and argues, "A C is not abysmal—"

"It's _average_ ," her mother bites out like it's a filthy word. And to Mother it is, she knows it is. Because she has been told her whole life that average is not good enough. Not average grades, or average weight, or average wealth, or average status. No, no everything has to be well above average for Cora fucking Mills, everyone has to _excel_ , and it's so toxic, so terribly toxic, it makes her burn, makes that ache in her skull twist harder, that rubber band in her brain stretch and pull, straining so hard she can almost hear it, almost misses the way her mother levels her with, "And if life was fair, Regina, I wouldn't be sitting here listening to you tell me how terrible I'm being to you when you lied to me the moment you sat down."

She flushes hot and then cold; she did see, she does know. But she won't admit it, will not, will not validate her mother's need to punish her over a little white lie, so she lies again right to her face, says, "I did not—"

"I saw you put it in your bag, Regina," and she's all ice now. "What did you think?" she asks. "That I would begrudge you something to eat while we spoke? Is that the monster you think I am?"

It is exactly the monster she thinks she is, exactly the monster she _knows_ she is, but she can't say that, can't force the words up and out, because the truth, the truth would be worse than the lies. So she lies again, falsehoods tripping easily from her tongue to appease and to placate. She lies and says, "The scone is for Henry."

It doesn't work.

All her mother does is look at her, tells her, "I don't believe you," and this is— this is— She can't be here anymore. She won't stay here for this. She won't put herself through this, this is not what she agreed to.

It was coffee and conversation, it was trying to mend things, it was not letting Mother use her as her own personal punching bag to make up for lost time.

So she's done. She has to go, she has to protect herself, and leave. It's the healthy thing to do, the smart thing, and quite frankly the thing that will get her most quickly away from the heavy not-quite-averted gazes of the other patrons.

So she bends for her purse, mutters, "I have to go."

"Of course you do," Cora scoffs, as Regina jerkily slings the strap of her bag over her shoulder and pushes to her feet. She's not even going to look back. She's just going to walk right out of here, and— "Make a scene and then storm off – and then tell me again that you're not acting like a—"

No, nope, she's not. She will not take the blame for this.

So she spins back to face her mother and leans in close, hisses, "We had rules. I had rules. You _agreed_ to them – and you have broken every single one of them today. So yes, I am leaving. And you can forget about Henry's birthday. Not unless I hear an apology first."

She straightens at that, feels strong, even while she feels like she's dying. (She's dully aware she might be on the verge of a panic attack, but she thinks if she can get herself somewhere quiet and alone for a few minutes, she can head it off. Maybe. Possibly.)

"An apology?" her mother questions, disbelieving.

Regina dismisses her with a firm, "Goodbye, Mother," as she turns to walk away, and this time she doesn't look back.

**.::.**

The air is hot as she pushes out onto the sidewalk, hot but still not muggy, but she feels sweaty anyway. Her top is silky, it's not cotton, it doesn't breathe, and she feels dewy and warm, but she just needs to get to her car and then she can crank the air up and calm her breathing, and—

She smacks straight into another body, so focused on where she's going, and it's not until she feels the cool, clammy hands at her elbows, and hears the familiar sound of her name, "Regina?" that she even realizes who it is. But then she does realize, and her stomach swoops so hard she thinks she might be sick, her knees going jello-y for a moment, and it's too strong of a reaction, really, but she's just so thrown to begin with, and then there he is.

Sidney.

She should say something, hello, something – anything – other than the, "W-what are you doing here?" that comes out.

"I was doing some shopping, and I thought I saw your car. I was going to come in and say hello, but I saw you with your mother and it looked… heated." He gives her a sympathetic little smile, and she's still trying to wrap her brain around him being here. On a Saturday. In jeans and a polo shirt, and still holding onto her elbows, why is he still holding onto her elbows? She shrugs him off as he finishes, "I thought better of it, but then you got up, so I thought maybe… Is everything okay?"

"Yes. Fine," she lies, because apparently that's what she _does_ now, she lies. But she just needs to get to her car, needs a minute, because Mother will follow, Mother will be behind her, and there will be repercussions for her behavior, and they will be cutting and sadistic if Mother can get her alone away from any company at all. She is making an exit; she needs to _go_. "I'm sorry, Sidney, I—"

"You're upset," he says, and he's trying to be nice, but she's trying not to have a small breakdown, and he's just smiling at her that way he does, and it's unnerving today; her nerves are shot, they can't handle ambushes – even innocent coincidental ones – from awkward ex-dates. "Maybe we could go somewhere, and talk about it? Or not talk about it, if you want a distraction. We could just go over the—"

"Sidney, I'm sorry, but I really have to go," she tells him again, disentangling from the hands that have made it once again to her elbows. "I left Henry with the sitter; I'm running late."

It's not a lie, that one's true. Henry is with Mary Margaret, and she has what Regina suspects is probably a date with Kathryn's husband to get ready for, so Regina had promised to be home in, God, it must be forty minutes at this point; she doesn't have time to dawdle with Sidney of all people.

He starts to speak again, but she interrupts, says, "I'm sorry, it's just not a good day; I'll see you Monday," and strides toward her car again.

She feels panicky, feels pursued, even though that's ridiculous. Mother doesn't chase people; she won't follow (she might, though, if she isn't done talking, and Regina certainly had not let her have the last word).

She makes it to her car in short order, punches the automatic lock and lets herself in. Her fingers are shaking as she starts the car and cranks the air to artic, takes one quick, shuddering breath and the jerks the car into reverse.

**.::.**

He's making mac and cheese with hot dogs – a time-honored American classic that his son gobbles up with gusto even though Robin is not entirely sold on its appeal – when his phone rings, and it's Regina's name that pops up.

His guts twist the way they usually do at her unexpected presence, physical or otherwise. Guilt still hovers at the back of his mind over the hurt he hadn't meant to cause her this morning, and all the hurt he's caused her since, well, forever. And then there's a little curl of dread that maybe she's going back on her agreement to watch Roland Monday night – Marian had consented to the extra day without too much fuss, after all.

But when he answers the call, all those concerns fly straight out the kitchen window.

He can hear her breathing over his "Hello," choppy, and uneven, and loud. And so before she even gets a word out, he's asking, "Are you alright, babe?"

"No, I'm—" she starts, and then amends to, "Yes, I just – I just had lunch with my mother, and she was horrible, really horrible, and I'm upset, and I can't come home like this." Her voice breaks a little, wobbles, she sounds teary and it rips him up inside. "But I'm supposed to relieve the sitter in th-thirty minutes, and I just need some time to calm down, and I'm still all the way over by work, and— _shit_."

He hears the blaring doppler honk of a horn, and realizes, "Are you driving, love?"

She's crying; he can hear it in her voice, the uneven tension, the wet wobble. She's crying, and driving, and she's likely to hurt someone, or herself, so when she answers, "Uh huh," and, "I just had to get away from there," he urges her to pull over.

"Stop somewhere, love; pull over til you get yourself together."

"No, I'm late; I need to— Can you— I know it's your day with Roland, but—"

"Regina, babe, I'll go relieve the sitter as soon as we hang up," he assures, "but please pull over somewhere."

"I'm alright."

"You're crying, which means eyes are probably blurry, and you're piloting a two-ton hunk of metal right now," Robin reasons, cursing internally when he spies his macaroni noodles starting to boil over. "Please, pull over for a minute before you hurt yourself."

She says, "oh," in a way that's small, and shaky, her breath hitching, catching, and then he listens to her sniffle, yanks the pan off the heat for a second and then lowers the flame, moves it back. Spares a glance for Roland in the living room, thoroughly engrossed in a conversation he can't quite make out with Tuck. Occupied, and safe, and that's all that matters.

"Okay," she says a minute later. "Okay, I pulled over."

"Good," he says softly, tries to keep his voice calm, because she is so clearly not. "Good, it's alright, babe, everything's going to be okay."

She whispers, "I'm sorry," repeats it, and it sounds a little muffled, like she's talking into her hands. "I shouldn't have called you, but the sitter can't stay late today, and I can't let Henry see me this upset. And I shouldn't be driving yet."

So at least she's not irrational, then. That's good.

"Just breathe, love. It's alright. You know I don't mind watching Henry; it helps keep Roland occupied, honestly. I'll go pick him up, you just sit and breathe for a minute." She hums something that might be an _mmhmm_ , and he asks, "Do I need to pay the sitter anything?"

She's already starting to sound better, steadier, when she says, "No, it's okay. I'll settle up with her later. Just tell her I said to put it on my tab."

"Will do." He hears her suck in a breath, blow it out slowly, and can't help murmuring, "Just like that, babe. Deep breaths."

He wants to ask what exactly her mother managed to do or say to get her so worked up, but then he also thinks maybe he'd rather not know. And that he'd rather like to sock Cora Mills right in the jaw, if such a thing weren't so incredibly frowned upon.

"Can you just keep talking for a minute?" she asks. "I like your voice. Soothing."

"Oh, yeah?" he asks her, lips curving at the admission. And then he just talks. "I'm taking that as a compliment. You know, Roland wanted to pick you flowers this morning. I had to convince him that perhaps we shouldn't take your own flowers for your bouquet, lest we ruin the look of your pretty garden. And I told him I'd already brought you a flower yesterday, see, so you were all set for flowers. But he was quite adamant, so who knows, maybe next weekend we'll end up at the florist, getting flowers for his Regina."

She lets out a little chuckle, then, and takes another deep breath, and this one is steadier, he thinks she sounds steadier. Her soft "He's sweet" has less wobble, less breath. "You've raised him well."

"I've tried."

"You have. And just… Just don't ever become a terrible person, okay? Don't ever become that parent who rips their child apart for sport."

She sounds a little breathy still, but calmer, definitely. She's calming. He's not, not at her words, at her edge of panic – he's feeling decidedly less calm by the moment. Angrier. Resentful on her behalf.

"I promise," he tells her, and it's one he makes easily and intends very much to keep. And then he says, "I'm sorry she put you through this."

"I'll be okay," she tells him, and now she finally sounds it. She's finally calmed. "I just wasn't ready for it. I thought it would be like last time, but I pushed, and she…" Regina exhales, doesn't finish. After a moment of quiet, she asks, "Are you sure I'm not putting you out?"

"I'm certain of it," he assures, adding, "Anything for you, babe. You or Henry."

She breathes in, out, her breath a loud rush over microphone. "Thank you."

"No problem," he assures, frowning when his timer goes off and moving the boiling pasta pan to the cold burner before he kills the beep-beeping. "Are you feeling a little better now?"

"Yes," she tells him, and he believes it. She sounds a bit more herself, a bit more put together. "Thank you for talking to me."

"Mmhmm," he murmurs, and then, "Take your time today. I can have him as long as you need – just call when you want him sent home. In the meantime – did you eat with your mum?" She grunts a little and then tells him no, and he imagines her in her kitchen that night after Cora had destroyed her. Remembers the way every bite of pizza had been like salt in the wounds her mother had slashed open. Still, he urges, "You should go grab a bite somewhere. Someplace quiet, with good food. Somewhere you won't mind sitting for a bit. Clear your head."

She makes this soft sound, almost a little _mm_ , and says, "I can't think about that yet. But maybe. Thank you for the time."

"Take as much as you need," he assures, and then Roland is asking about his "mac'a'cheese" from the other room, and he tells her, "I've got to finish Roland's lunch…"

"Okay. I'm good. Thank you, again."

"Stop thanking me," he says, and then he lets her go, finally, reminding her one more time to take care of herself, not to worry about Henry, to call when she's ready.

He hangs up the phone, and focuses on mixing powdered cheese sauce, milk, and butter, nukes cut hot dog pieces until they're hot but won't burn.

And then he sets Roland a plate, gives explicit instructions not to feed macaroni to Tuck lest he spend the rest of the afternoon filling the house with toxic fumes, and heads next door to get Henry.

**.::.**

She hadn't really been paying attention when she'd pulled over. Robin had been right, she'd been teary-eyed and shaky-fingered, and had just recklessly rushed her way through a yellow light that was more red then yellow by the time she hit the intersection. He'd been right, she needed to pull over, so she'd turned right, and pulled into the first parking lot, and she'd known, vaguely, as she'd tried to catch her breath, that it was familiar, but she hadn't really been _thinking_ about it. Had been staring at the buttons on her steering wheel and listening to the comforting timbre of his voice as he talked, and trying to calm herself down before this became a full-blown anxiety attack.

But now she's hung up, and wrapped her fingers around the steering wheel, and dropped her forehead to her knuckles, and she's breathing, breathing, but her heart is still racing, she still feels sweaty. And she tips her head up, just for a second, and realizes she's pulled over into the parking lot of the building that houses her therapist's office – how fucking fitting.

The laugh she lets out is a little hysterical, but she decides to take this as a sign, and reaches shaky fingers for the phone resting in her lap, pulling up her contacts and scrolling through to _Archie Hopper_.

She presses call, and lifts the phone to her ear, listens as it rings once, twice, three times, her stomach twisting, and then she hears his familiar, "Hello?"

"Dr. Hopper? It's Regina Mills."

"Yes, I recognized the number. It's been quite a while since we've spoken; what can I do for you?"

"I need to make an appointment."

"For today?"

She shakes her head, even though he can't see her, stares at one of the trees on the other side of the parking lot, and says, "No. No, not for today, for later in the week maybe."

She can hear her own voice, it's shaky, and she breathes in, out, tries to settle herself even further.

"That's fine, we can deal with that later," he says, his voice steady, calm, even. Therapist voice. Sometimes it annoys the hell out of her, but right now it's reassuring, calming. "But you've called me now, on my work cell, not the office number. Is there something you'd like to talk about?"

Her stomach twists sharply again; she'd called his cell – of course she had, because it's Saturday, but she hadn't really been thinking. It's _Saturday_ , and he's not in the office; she should have waited to call until Monday.

"Oh. I— I'm sorry," she says, and, "I'm interrupting your weekend."

"It's quite alright; I'm not busy. And you sound upset. Is there something you need to talk about right now?"

"No, this is your free time," she protests. Selfish, she's so selfish, calling him on the weekend, just because she can't handle one single coffee date with her own mother. Get it together, Regina. "I'm sorry – I shouldn't have – I'll call Belle on Monday and make an appointment."

"Regina. Breathe. It's alright. Talk to me."

She breathes, breathes, hesitates, and then says, "I just had coffee with my mother, and it did not go well." Understatement, she thinks, and she curses herself for the way her voice strangles a little at the end, the way tears well in her eyes again (God, she probably looks terrible now, that perfectly understated makeup probably running – did she wear the waterproof mascara?).

"Where are you now? Are you at home or someplace you feel comfortable talking?"

Her chuckle is wet and short. "I'm in the parking lot of your office building. In my car. I needed to pull over somewhere for a minute."

Dr. Hopper laughs at that, too, and she feels herself smile in answer as he asks, "Is that what prompted the call?"

"Yes," she admits. "But I'd been meaning to call anyway."

"Do you feel comfortable staying there while we talk? Or do you need to drive somewhere? Go to a cafe nearby?"

"No, no, I'd rather talk in private." If she's going to have an impromptu therapy session about her mother, she'd rather do it without an audience. She's had just about enough public humiliation for one day. "I'm okay here."

"Okay, that's fine. As long as you feel safe where you are. Now, back to what you were saying – You had coffee with Cora? What went wrong? Was she commenting on what you ate? Your appearance?"

She lets out another laugh, this one brittle, and says, "My appearance, my behavior, my life. Everything. She didn't comment on what I ate because I _didn't_ eat, because I was afraid she _would_ comment on it, and then it bit me in the ass anyway, because she knew I—" She takes a breath, and starts over, says, "I go to this particular coffeehouse a lot, and the guy who works there, he'd saved me this scone that I like. And so I took it to-go, and tried to sneak it into my purse, but she saw. She didn't say anything until right before I left, but she saw."

"Is that why you left? Because of what she said about the scone?"

"No, because of…" _God, where to begin_ , she scoffs. "Everything. Just everything, she was— She was in fine form, let's just say that." She's cold. She's had the air cranked up too high, and that bloom of nervous sweat is evaporating, and she's cold. Regina reaches icy fingers to turn the air down a notch, and explains, "I left because she wasn't following the rules. She agreed to rules before the last time we met, and this time she just… she just broke all of them. And I was so stupid, I didn't see it coming. I walked right into her trap, I let my guard down, and she just picked me apart, and I feel so stupid, I should have known she would do this, I should have known this wouldn't work. We're supposed to be trying to fix our relationship, but I should have known better. Why would she want to fix it when the way it is now, she gets to do and say whatever she fucking wants?"

Her seat belt is still on, she realizes. She'd moved the shoulder strap when she'd leaned forward earlier, but she's still buckled in, and she feels anxious, a little trapped. She unclips it, disentangles herself and shifts slightly in her seat, toes out of her pumps as Archie starts to speak again.

"It's not foolish to want a relationship with your mother. It's admirable that you're trying to fix things, that you are giving her a chance to fix things. That's an incredibly healthy, mature, _brave_ thing to do."

"It doesn't feel very healthy right now," she mutters. "I just thought… I mean, I knew that she's Mother, and she lies, but she sounded like she really wanted to fix things, and I… I don't want everything to be such a battle," she confesses wearily. "I want to be able to see my parents, for Henry to be able to see them. And last time she was so good, she followed the rules, but today… I lied to her, and I pushed her, and… she made her displeasure _very_ clear."

"She put you in a position where you felt like you had to lie to protect yourself, to keep yourself from slipping into habits that you have struggled to break. I understand the desire to have a relationship with your family, to have that for Henry, but you have to consider the costs."

"I know," she says; her voice sounds small, and she hates it. Clears her throat. There's a glare off her hood, a bright light slicing into the car, and it's annoying her. She should move, but she doesn't want to bother, so she shuts her eyes against the light, and tells Dr. Hopper, "I didn't talk to her for a whole month after Mother's Day. Not even on her birthday. She was awful to me, so I… cut her off. _She's_ the one who came crawling back to _me_ this time." She drops to a frustrated mutter to add, "I should've just told her no."

"What made you say yes?"

"She apologized. She said she knew she'd been awful, and she was sorry, and she wanted to start over. What kind of a monster would I be if I told her no? If I wouldn't even let her try?"

"It wouldn't make you a monster, just someone responding to a long series of broken promises and years worth of emotional and verbal abuse."

He uses that word when they talk about Cora – abuse – but Regina almost never does. Not anywhere else, anyway. Not outside of therapy. (Plenty of other choice words, but rarely that one.) It's not that she thinks he's wrong, she knows he's right, but… It's stupid, and it's prideful, and it's probably Cora herself spilling poisonous judgements into her ear, but even at thirty-five Regina struggles with the idea of calling herself a survivor of lifelong abuse. Struggles especially with the idea of her son ever looking at her that way.

And Henry is the reason she gives now, asking, "But how would I explain it to Henry? That he never gets to see his grandmother again, because Mom… can't handle her? Because I can't just… let it roll off when she says the things she does?"

"From what you've said in the past, Henry is a fairly perceptive kid; I think he would understand more than you think."

"I don't want him to understand this," she whispers. That light is still burning into the car, her whole view an orange wash as tears gather beneath closed eyelids. "I just want her to stop. And I thought maybe this time she meant it, or that she was at least trying, but..."

"Regina, you can't change people, you can only change the way you respond to them."

"But _she_ could change," Regina argues, sitting a little straighter and opening her eyes again. The first thing she sees, though, is a family walking along the sidewalk toward the entrance of the building, so she shuts her eyes again, wishes her windows were tinted. "If she wanted to, she could change. If she actually _cared_ about me, she could change. She doesn't have to be this way. She doesn't have to humiliate me in public, or criticize my son, or act like I'm ungrateful for not being being able to handle her during a workday. She could change. I would change for Henry, I'd do _anything_ for Henry."

"Because that is the kind of mother _you_ are," Archie tells her, and it soothes and aches all at once. "You can't expect your mother to be the same, no matter how badly you want her to be, no matter how rational or logical it seems. Cora is who she is. Only Cora can decide if she wants to change that. There is nothing you have done wrong to make her this way, nothing you could do differently to change her. This isn't your fault, Regina. You are not your mother. She is not your responsibility."

"But I _could_ do things differently," she tells him, rubbing her thumb against the tension headache still steadily brewing. "I knew – I knew I was doing things that would make her pick at me. I could have worn something she would have approved of, I could have done my hair instead of letting it curl, I could have just _admitted_ that I got the scone when she asked if I hadn't gotten any food, or sat where she wanted to. I could have made things easier today, but I didn't." She'd been so smug about them earlier, all these little rebellions, all these little assertions of her own control, and where had it gotten her? Subdued and belittled and cut down. They'd seemed such good ideas at the time, but now she just feels like an idiot, and it colors her words as she berates herself, "I had to rebel, I had to test her limits, like a child, just like she said."

"Regina, I want you to do something for me. Think of all the things you just listed that were so incredibly offensive to your mother. Can you think of them?"

It's not a long list, and it's all vivid in her mind, all her mistakes, all her missteps. So she tells him cautiously, "Yes…"

"I want you to list them back to me," he instructs, "just as a list of actions taken. Not how she responded, not why you were 'wrong' to do them, just list them as things that you did in your day, and _your_ reasoning behind making those decisions."

"I wore shorts, because it's hot," she begins, swallowing around the knot in her throat, her chin wobbling a bit, because she thinks she knows what he's doing, and it hurts, admitting it all, it just hurts. "And because I thought they looked nice. And she did, too, actually. She said they looked nice. Or that they were flattering, anyway." A tear has managed to slip out, and she swipes at it, sniffles, and continues, "And I left my hair wavy because it's not too humid, and it looked nice when it started to dry. I knew she wouldn't like it, but… _I_ liked it. I felt... pretty. And I asked to move because she always chooses the most uncomfortable chairs, like she _wants_ me to be uncomfortable, and if I was going to sit for an hour, I'd rather be in the arm chairs five feet away from that same stupid table we sat at the last time."

"And what about the scone?" Archie prompts when she takes another moment to swallow thickly and wipe at another tear, her throat tight. "Why did you take the scone?"

"Because Leroy saved it for me, and I like them. And I thought maybe later, I would want a treat. And I didn't want him to…" She shakes her head, embarrassment curdling in her gut just like it had earlier, just like when, "I didn't want him to make assumptions about me because I wouldn't take it, just because of her."

"Okay. Good." Dr. Hopper does exactly what she knew he would, and says it all back to her again; her chest squeezes tighter with every retelling: "So, you wore an outfit that you were comfortable in, that made you feel attractive; you took a pastry you enjoy that your regular server thoughtfully saved for you; and you requested to move to a different seat because you didn't want to spend an hour with someone in an uncomfortable chair. Do those sound like irrational requests to you?"

"No," she admits, more of a watery whine than anything, breaking off into a hitching little sob as more tears spill out. Because they're not, damnit, they're _not_ irrational, she was just trying to be _herself_ , and now she's stuck in her car having emergency therapy because she had the audacity to dress, and do her own hair, and choose a different seat, and _want_ something that wasn't perfect.

"If anyone else you knew told you they had done those things and the person they were with had treated them the way your Mother treated you in response, would you blame them for the choices they made?"

"No."

"Then why are you being so hard on yourself?"

She thinks for a minute, tries to come up with an answer – or at least, one that doesn't sound as pathetic as the one on the tip of her tongue. She has already been humiliated and enraged, and… and she doesn't want to add pathetic to the list. But here she is, dripping mascara in her car at noon on a Saturday, so on second thought, she's probably already there.

And it's only Dr. Hopper, and hardly the most pathetic she's ever looked in front of him, so she tells him the truth, after all.

"Because it hurts, and I could have stopped it," she admits, wishing for all the world she had just toed the line today if for no other reason than that at least right now she wouldn't feel like _this_. It's stupid, and shameful, and weak, but it's the truth: "If I'd just given her what she wanted, she wouldn't have been so _mean_."

"But you didn't do anything any other normal person would have done, in any normal situation."

"But our situation isn't normal. So don't I have to work within what it is?"

"If someone else came to you and told you they were in a similar position, would you expect them to conform, to adjust their behaviour—often to their own detriment—in order to appease the other person?"

Her "Yes," in response is quiet and sulky; she already knows he's not going to let her get away with it.

"Really?" Yeah, he didn't buy that line of bullshit for a second, did he? "Just because I can't see you, Regina, doesn't mean I can't tell when you're lying to me."

Defensiveness makes her bristle, and bite, "Well, apparently that's what I do, Dr. Hopper. I lie. I lie, and I am ungrateful, and I am unappreciative, and hysterical, and childish."

"Woah, woah, woah," he interrupts, which is probably for the best, because lord knows she could go on and on down the list of her so-called faults. "I thought I was speaking to _Regina_ Mills. Not Cora Mills. I'm sorry for the confusion, Mrs. Mills, would you like to keep telling me the inaccurate thoughts you have about your daughter's personality?"

He's sassing her – he does that sometimes, which is fine, because she certainly does it to him – pointing out the words she's lobbing at him aren't hers, but her Mother's, but when he asks that, asks if she wants to keep telling him, she finds that, _yes_ , she does. She's stopped up, emotions still corked and fizzing inside her, the pressure building and she needs to crack it, to let it out, wants to tell him the terrible things her mother said, the things that cut and bruised. She's not a talker, not always even in therapy, but there's a safety to this, to Dr. Hopper (who else would she sob over the phone to? Robin? Her Daddy? And that's it, really, that's everyone.)

So she brushes at more tears and tries not to let her voice go too wobbly as she confides, "She said she built my whole life. That she got me my job, and my house, and Henry's school, and—"

"Was Cora in the room when you had your interview? Was she there every day as you raised Henry, taught him to read and write, his numbers and letters? Was she there pulling the puppet strings as you went into work every day and did your job and came home and took care of your son? Did she do those things for you? Or did you do them yourself?"

"I did them," she answers, and that's stronger, that feels strong. She's strong. Frustrated and angry and hurt, but strong, damnit. "And that's what I told her, but she kept talking over me, and…"

"In my experience, women like your mother don't like to be told when they are wrong," Dr. Hopper tells her, and well, no shit, Sherlock. "It's...unsettling."

"That's because they don't believe they're ever fucking wrong," Regina gripes. "And when they are, they just change it so they're right again."

"Just because she has changed it in her mind, doesn't mean her version of reality is true, Regina. You know that. We've talked about that before."

"I know, but…" She feels that vise-grip tighten on her chest again. Feels the pressure, the pain, finds herself angry when it squeezes another few furious tears out of her. "She humiliated me. In public. She hurt me. I'm just so – so _hurt_."

"And you have every right to be. What she did was cruel, and manipulative. But you do not need to shoulder the blame for what _she_ did. You do not need to feel guilty for responding emotionally to your mother's thoughtless actions. This was not your fault, Regina."

"Oh believe me, they were not thoughtless," she mutters bitterly. "She put plenty of thought into them. She always does."

"Then allow me to rephrase," Archie says to her. "You do not need to take the blame for your mother's manipulation and emotional abuse. It is not your fault. You have every right to be upset. But you did nothing wrong."

He's right. She knows it, she's known it, she knew it this morning when she started her little rebellion, and she knew it with every malicious word her mother cast over her. And the doubt, that's Mother. That's Mother exerting her control even from blocks away, earning validation for her actions with Regina's own acceptance of them, and he's right, she knows he's right, it's not her fault. It feels like it is, but they've been over this, and… and…

She absorbs his words like water into a sponge, plays them over in her head and tells herself they are true. That he's right. Not her fault. She has every right to be upset. She did nothing wrong. Maybe it doesn't feel true right now, but it _is_ true.

So Regina takes a deep, shuddering breath in, lets it whoosh out, and says, "Okay."

"Okay? Are you feeling a little more settled now?"

"Yes." The acceptance helps, even if she has to force it a bit today. That tension in her chest is easing, her breath comes easier. But her sinuses feel stopped up, and that spot above her brow that had been aching is now a slowly growing band of pressure. So she feels more settled, yes, but, "I have a headache… And I started the day thinking about Daniel, and this was just… too much on top of that. You would have been so proud of me a few weeks ago. I set very clear rules, very self-protective rules with her. I thought it would be enough."

"I'm still proud of you now, Regina," he praises, and that helps, too. Helps her chest loosen, her throat, her muscles. "You removed yourself from a damaging situation, you called to talk through your emotions and thought processes. You are taking steps toward healthy self-care. Those are things you should be very proud of."

She knows that, or thinks she should know it, anyway, and yet, "Right now, I don't feel very proud. I feel like I failed."

"You haven't failed," Dr. Hopper assures. "You've had a rough day. And you need to take some time to recover. Have a nice, filling lunch. Do something for yourself when you get home, maybe play the piano or read a few chapters of a book, play a board game with Henry, just something for you that you enjoy."

"Henry's at the neighbor's for the afternoon. I called him before I called you. I didn't want him to see me upset like this."

"Okay. Can he stay there a little longer so you can take a little time for yourself before you collect him?"

"He can stay as long as I need. The neighbor and I are…" She trails off, unsure quite how to finish that sentence. How does one quantify her relationship with Robin? She settles for "close," and then adds, "It's complicated," before letting out a dry little chuckle. "My life is a mess right now."

"Sounds like we'll have plenty to talk about at your session this week then," he tells her, and she'd almost forgotten that's why she'd called. To book a session. "How is Wednesday for you? I have the 6:30 slot available, I can pencil you in now and let Belle know on Monday."

It's her usual night, or has been, in the past, and she can't think of any plans she has this week, so she tells him, "Wednesday's good."

"And Regina, I mean it, take some time, an hour at least, before you go and get Henry. Not including the time it takes you to eat something. I'll be asking you about it when I see you."

"Can that hour be a nap?" she requests, exhausted now that she's run out of tears and tension. She honestly feels like she could just curl up in her back seat and take a long, long nap. Might have to do that, if the way her vision is starting to tremble around the edges is any indication. "I just really want to go to sleep for a while."

"That's a normal response after having a panic attack. You should drink some water, _eat_ something, and then see how you feel. If you're still tired then, a nap might be a good way to recharge."

It's the third time in the last five minutes he's mentioned food – that hasn't gone unnoticed by her – and it irks her a little. The insinuation, no matter how justified, that she _won't_ eat a proper lunch.

So she tells him a little tartly, "I'm not starving myself, Dr. Hopper. And besides, I have that stupid scone."

"You have a tendency to skip proper meals when you are under strain; I'm just reminding you that your physical health is just as important as your emotional and mental health," he says to her, and okay, alright, fine. That is what she pays him for, isn't it? "And that 'stupid scone' is not lunch. A nice snack perhaps, but not lunch."

"Okay," she concedes, but she doesn't think she'll be a good little patient today. It's not that the altercation with Mother has left her nauseous (even though it has, a little), or that it has made the idea of that scone sound inedible (even though it has, a little). It's just that that tremor around the edges of her vision isn't going away, which means it's likely aura, likely the building blocks for a migraine, and if she's looking at that kind of pain in her near future, she doesn't want a full stomach. Wants an Imitrex, and a long nap. She should get on the road, get home… "I should go, before this headache gets any worse. My eyes hurt."

"Drive safely," Archie urges, and she wonders if he knows, if he can guess. "You know my number if you need to call again. If not, I'll see you on Wednesday."

"Yeah," she says, and, "Thank you," and then, "I'm sorry for interrupting your day."

"You didn't interrupt anything except the New York Times crossword, and it isn't going anywhere."

She smiles a little. Of course he's sitting at home doing the crossword. He would be. Probably with a cup of coffee, a mug with some silly saying on it, maybe, and his dog lounging by the chair. She'd done the same this morning, minus the dog.

In fact, she asks, "Today's?"

"Yes, today's."

"Twelve across is Rachmaninoff," she tells him. "It's worded weird, but it is."

Dr. Hopper laughs at that, and if she tries, she can imagine the way his eyes crinkle at the corners. "Ah, thank you," he chuckles. "I was stuck on that one. Lucky you gave me a call to help me out."

It's sweet. Meant to mollify, to lighten the moment, and she lets it, even through the dull haze of her slow-growing pain. Yes, let's pretend I called to help you with your word puzzle, not to cry at you for an hour. That was just a bonus, didn't you know? It's absurd, and she likes it, laughs a little, too, and responds in kind, "Yeah, I guess, huh? I'll see you Wednesday. Get ready."

"I'm always ready," he assures gamely. "I'll see you then. And Regina? Don't forget about your homework."

"Yeah, yeah," Regina sighs. "What I Did On My Summer Saturday, by Regina Mills. I'll have it all ready for you.'

"Sounds thrilling, I can't wait."

"Bye, Dr. Hopper."

"Goodbye, Regina."

She hangs up, and sits there for a moment. Sucks in a breath, lets it out, wishes she was in the habit of keeping water in her car. She's thirsty, and he's right, it would help. But with the summer heat, it would probably just be warm and plasticky anyway. She'll be home soon enough, and then she'll drink.

She starts the engine again, then flips down the visor to check her face in the mirror, and cringes at what she sees. Her eyes are puffy and red, her mascara runny (so not the waterproof, then), her lipstick mostly gone. She pulls a wipe from her purse and cleans up the worst of the mascara, fishes out a pack of tissues, and uses one to blow her nose, wincing when it makes that ache flare sharper in her skull.

By the time she gets home, that ache is upgraded to a regular pulsing throb, and she's white-knuckling the wheel against rolling swells of nausea. She's grateful, so grateful, for an empty house, a quiet house, and can barely bring herself to change into something more comfortable before she crawls under her covers for that much-needed nap.

**.::.**

By half past three, she's awake again, curled on her sofa and finally munching on that scone as she watches some mindless TV to numb the lingering hangover of her migraine. There are crumbs, but who cares? She'll clean them up later, and her mother is not here to see, or judge, and even if she was, fuck her.

Her doorbell rings, and her stomach twists. There's nobody she really wants to see right now, and Henry (and frankly Robin, too) wouldn't bother with the bell.

She peels herself off the sofa, and trudges her way to the door, only to find a delivery woman from the florist, holding a long cardboard box with her name on it.

"Express delivery for Regina Mills?" she says, and Regina frowns, and signs, and takes the box into the kitchen, lifting the lid carefully and hoping desperately that she's not about to find a dozen red roses and a half-assed, insincere apology from her mother.

What she finds is, quite possibly, worse. A dozen neatly nestled kaleidoscope roses, a purple vase, and a card that reads:

_I hope your day improved by leaps and bounds, and I hope these flowers brighten your weekend like you did mine. Yours, Sidney_


	27. Chapter 27

Robin takes Roland to the aquarium on Monday afternoon, for the simple reason that he _can_. They start the day with fish-shaped nuggets and fries, and a fruit cup because he can hear a tiny Regina on his shoulder griping about how meals should all have fruit and vegetables. (She probably doesn't count a fruit cup as real fruit, but they're at the bloody aquarium, and anyway she's not really here, is she?)

And then they wander around, and see penguins, and fish, all colors and sizes, and sharks and dolphins and turtles. Roland _ooh_ s and _ahh_ s, and alternates between toddling around near Robin's feet and being hoisted up and carted around in his arms, and it's an absolutely perfect day. A wonderful day.

No worries and no cares, nothing to bother about except getting back home before Henry's lesson, and they've plenty of time for that. He buys Roland a stuffed turtle to go with his stuffed monkey, and he doesn't even let the name _Will Scarlet_ popping up on his cell phone as he's finishing clipping Roland into his car seat burst the bubble of his good mood.

It's not that there's bad blood between them, not really, it had been Robin's own choice to lend Will the money he did, and Robin's own foolishness that led to everything that came after. So he doesn't blame Will, not really, and they've certainly seen and spent time with each other since, but… well, things aren't quite the way they once were.

Still, when Will says, "I thought we might grab a pint or two tonight," Robin finds himself grateful for a reason to say no.

"I've got a lesson to teach tonight, to the neighbor kid. And I've got Roland."

"Ah, the missus finally lettin' you have him on a weekday?"

"She's not my missus," Robin grumbles, perhaps a bit more grated by the phrasing than he really has a right to be – Will's just taking the piss out of him a bit, after all. "But yes, she seems to be finally coming to the conclusion that I am not in fact a lowlife deadbeat after all."

"I'm sorry about all that, mate," Will tells him, and not for the first time. He's been a bit shy on paying back coin, but he's offered up plenty of wincing apologies. "But that's why I wanted to see you, actually. Maybe I can pop by for a bite? We can take Roland out for burger or something before your other thing."

"We're just leaving the aquarium," he tells Will. "I was going to grab him something on the way home."

"You need to get him back to Marian?"

"No, the neighbor's watching him while I teach her son."

"The one you fancy?"

"Yeah, that one."

"Where you planning on stopping? I'll meet you. It'll be worth your while, I promise."

He's intrigued and concerned in equal measure, but he agrees anyway, and in half an hour or so, he finds himself at a McDonald's, sitting across from Will as he entertains Roland with some rather poorly performed sleight of hand tricks with a salt packet.

Robin's not really watching, too busy staring at the three thousand dollar check in his hand. The one with his name on it, and Will's scratchy signature at the bottom.

"Where'd you get this kind of money?" Robin asks him, finally able to make his tongue work.

Will looks mildly offended as he looks up and answers, "Work. Good, honest work."

Robin's brows rise. "'Good, honest work,' huh?"

Will's smile quirks a little, goes impish, as he adds, "Honest enough."

Robin snorts. "That sounds more like it."

"It's not dirty money," Will tells him earnestly. "And it's long past time I paid you back. We're square now, yeah, mate?"

Robin stares at the check for a half-second more, then folds it and tucks it into his wallet, and says, "Yeah, we're square."

Roland asks Uncle Will to pull the salt from his ear again, giggling through his mouthful of cheeseburger, and Robin reaches for his Big Mac.

Three thousand dollars.

His stomach is a little wobbly, half the sucker-punch heat of surprised adrenaline still fading from the moment he'd read the check, half the dizzying excitement of not being fucking skint for once.

His mind races with everything he can do with the money, with the idea that perhaps Marian will look on him a little more kindly now that he can give her the last of the money he owes.

It's a heavy weight lifted, that's for sure, and Robin mentally crosses fingers and toes that today's good luck continues. And then he takes a bite of his burger, and enjoys dinner with his son and his friend.

**.::.**

Robin shows up on her doorstep at promptly five minutes to six, Roland announcing an excited "Regina!" when she opens the door.

Regina grins at him, says, "Hello, baby," and scoops him up onto her hip when he launches himself at her. "Did you have a good day with your daddy?"

"Uh huh! We went to the 'quarium!"

"You went to the aquarium?" she asks, her smile widening again at his infectious enthusiasm. "I'm sure we have a lot to talk about, then." Roland gives her an _uh huh,_ and then she turns that smile to Robin, catches him giving them one of his own that's so gorgeous it makes her heart stutter. He looks particularly good today, in a heathered-grey t-shirt that doesn't particularly bring out his anything, but somehow makes all of him look delicious. She has to swallow before she can manage, "Sounds like you made the most of your Monday."

"I've had a very good day," he tells her, hands tucking into the pockets of his jeans. Something about the action makes his biceps shift just so, and she finds herself distracted by them. Or maybe she's still in "treat yourself" mode after Mother's beat-down on Saturday. Still looking for every indulgence she can excuse as self-care.

She'd put the flowers from Sidney (something she should have talked to him about today, but she'd been very maturely avoiding him at all costs – not difficult to do with them both in a series of meetings all day, thankfully none of them the _same_ meetings) in the front window, half because it kept them somewhat out of her eyesight as she passed through the house, and half because, well, they _are_ awfully attractive. They're pretty, but they make her stomach do somersaults – she'd almost forgotten that she'd even run into him by the time they'd been delivered, too caught up with everything else.

And then she'd made herself some real food, because Dr. Hopper had been right, a scone wasn't exactly lunch, and her migraine was mostly faded. Nothing big, just a salad, something light that would tide her over until dinner. She'd taken Henry out – had wanted her son, and the unfamiliarity of eating out rather than the brood-inducing comfort of her own kitchen. And she'd wanted tequila. A good margarita, and some slightly decadent food to nurse her troubles. If tacos can be called decadent.

Sunday had been indulgent, too. She'd forced herself to stay in bed as late as she could stand, had woken to find even Henry was up before her, parked in the living room watching cartoons. And then there'd been stuffed French Toast for breakfast, and—

"Earth to Regina; Come in, Regina," Robin taunts, ducking his head to catch her view and stage-whispering, "I think we've lost her, Roland."

Regina snaps back to attention, realizes she's been daydreaming as Roland giggles in her hold.

"Sorry," she chuckles lightly. "I've had a _long_ day."

Robin frowns a little at that, asks, "You're sure taking him's no trouble?"

"I think we need to put a moratorium on that question," she teases dryly. "From both of us. We're like a broken record."

"Fair enough," Robin agrees. "No more excessive politeness, I swear it."

She smiles, and laughs again, asks, "When has that ever been your problem?" her head tilting a little to the side. It's not until she feels her teeth dig into her bottom lip that she realizes they're flirting. This is flirting. They're not supposed to be flirting.

So Regina straightens that neck, clears her throat a little, and asks, "Has he eaten yet?"

Robin nods, tells her, "Yeah, we got McDonald's."

"With Uncle Will!" Roland announces, saying something about hiding salt in his ear that makes absolutely no sense to her.

And anyway, she's busy giving Robin a single-brow-raised look of judgment that she doesn't feel the slightest bit bad about. From the slightly guilty grimace he gives her in return, she imagines he probably knew the judgment was coming anyway.

"Do me a favor," she tells Robin. "Bring him hungry next time. I'll save him some dinner."

Robin lets out a breathy scoff, or maybe a laugh, she's not sure.

"Lucky kid," he says, just as Henry appears at her side, guitar in hand.

As she shuts the door behind them, she thinks that maybe, just maybe, next week she'll make some of that barbequed chicken he likes.

**.::.**

He's thought about it for two days now.

Has paid Marian back the last bit he owed her, and filled the fridge and cupboards with enough food to last the rest of the month if they resort to pantry staples, and that electric guitar he's been saving for is calling his name. So Robin is going to spend his Wednesday doing a bit of shopping – especially now that he's met Nelly Tinkerman and hit it off immediately.

Ruby had brought her into the bar last night, a pixie-ish blonde with a head of messy ringlets bound up in a knot, a friendly accent, and a right hand currently wrapped in a lime green cast – had chatted him up about music and what she might need from him before they'd agreed that they'd serve each other's purposes nicely for at least her next gig, and after that they'll see.

And he doesn't _need_ an electric, he could borrow one for the gig – could borrow hers, she'd said, but it's custom, a glittery robin's egg blue, and she's left-handed on top of it. But he's been saving, slowly, has had his eye on a particular Epiphone Les Paul Standard down at the music shop, and so he's decided to treat himself.

The music shop, and then the shopping centre – his trainers are getting a bit shabby, and he could use a new pair of jeans. The second task is a chore, but the first will be fun, and he thinks he might see if Henry wants to go with. Do a little of that bonding he knows Regina would like, and the lad's birthday is coming up – maybe Robin will treat him to something. A new book of songs to work on, or a new strap, maybe.

He shouldn't blow through the money, he knows, but he can justify an investment in his craft, some clothes, and a birthday gift, can't he?

So he pours Lucky Charms into a bowl with a bit of milk, and then texts Regina, asking _Would you mind if I took Henry with me to the music shop? Picking up a new guitar_ , before he takes his cereal to the couch to munch and await her reply.

She's quick – no surprise there. Replies, _Not at all_ , and then, _What happened to your guitar?_

The one she bought him, he realizes. He's long since worked it off, but he still feels a little swoop of anxiety that she might think he's being unappreciative of her gift. (Investment, he reminds himself, it was an investment, not a gift.)

_Nothing, it's great. Buying it a friend – electric._

_I see. That will be fun for you boys. Will you be teaching Henry to play it?_

The thought had occurred to him, but he thinks he'd rather have Henry master a bit more of the acoustic before they get distracted by the novelty of electric, so he tells her, _Not yet. Maybe in a bit._

_He should be with Mrs. Lucas by now. Tell her I said it's fine._

_Great – I have work tonight. Can I drop him with you when we're done? I've some clothes shopping to do after, don't think he'd want to tag along._

_With you? He'd love it. I should con you into taking him back to school shopping ;)_

Robin smirks, chews a bite that is fortuitously entirely marshmallow and taps back a reply: _No con necessary. I can take him with and get some things if you don't think he'll mind._

_Robin, I was kidding._

_Don't have to be. I don't mind taking him._

_Seriously?_

_Seriously._

_You're sure?_

_Moratorium_

_Right. Then stop by the office and I'll give you some money._

_No need, I'm rather flush at the mo. Just set me a budget and pay me back. Is there a dress code I need to worry about?_

_Yes – he's in private school, they have uniforms. I'll forward it to you? I'll order most of his school shirts, but I'm fairly certain all his long pants are in danger of becoming high-waters, and last year's school shoes are half a size too small. You're sure you don't mind doing this?_

_Moratorium, Miss Mills._

_Just a few things, don't go crazy. PANTS. For some reason he hates shopping for pants with me._

_You don't ask him if there's enough room in the crotch do you?_

_It is IMPORTANT._

_It is EMBARRASSING. Send me the dress code. I'll get the lad some proper pants. Do I need to go to some particular preppy store for them ;)_

_Try Nordstrom. He needs dress pants this year._

_Yes ma'am._

The next time his phone vibrates, it's a call, not a text, and it's her, of course. Robin smiles, can't help it, and lifts the phone to his ear.

"You're sure you don't mind?" she asks without even giving him a hello. "I feel like I'm taking advantage."

"I offered," he reminds her, setting his bowl on the cushion next to him and leaning back until he can prop his feet on the coffee table. "Why should you make an extra trip when I'm already going? Besides, I like spending time with Henry. And you want me to, yeah?"

"I do," she confirms, slowly. "But school shopping?"

"Sure, sounds like fun," he shrugs. "Haven't done it in years. Roland's not old enough yet."

She's quiet for a second, and then he hears a soft sigh, and, "Letting you do this feels wrong."

Of course it does. He fights not to sigh himself, opts instead for teasing, "Because you're used to doing everything yourself, because you _like_ doing everything yourself, because you genuinely enjoy school shopping, or—"

"You know why."

Her voice is soft and sounds far too tired for… (he glances at the clock on the cable box) 10:07 in the morning – he ought to get a move on if he's going to be on time for work. And he does know why, at least he can guess at why she thinks this is such a terrible idea, but he's not quite sure how to squash her worries without saying anything they haven't already said to death.

His indecision leads to silence, which ends with her quietly murmured, "I shouldn't have left him with you this weekend."

"You were ill," he excuses, because who should have to worry about occupying a child when they've a splitting migraine? She'd still looked a bit peaky when she'd come to collect Henry for dinner.

But "I'm his mother," she argues. "I should be able to take care of myself _and_ my son, sick or not. And I should be able to take him school shopping—"

"And you are," he insists kindly, because he won't let her beat herself up over him offering to do her a simple favor, and he certainly won't have her thinking herself a shit mum over it. "You're perfectly capable, we both know that. School's not for another bloody month, you've got all the time in the world to do his shopping. But I'm going today. I want to take him to the music shop; I think he'd really like it. The rest is just convenient. Save you a little time, save Henry from the mortification of his mother asking through a fitting room door if he's left enough room for his balls."

She snorts a little over the line, lets it out on a soft chuckle, and he smiles. Good. Laughing is good. He likes her laughing.

And he hates her upset, so he relents just a bit, says, "If you don't want me to take him, I won't."

"No, I do, it's just…"

He can hear her hesitation, can imagine that busy brain of hers whirring with all the many reasons he shouldn't buy her son pants, and it's all ridiculous. It's not like he's offering to chaperone the boy to prom or anything. It's pants.

"You wanted to be friends, yeah?" he reminds.

"Yes."

"So, _my friend_ ," he begins, with emphasis and a thin veneer of snark, "let me take your kid for the day. Like you took mine the other night."

She hesitates again, and he can hear her breathe in, breathe out.

Sod it, this is ridiculous. It's shopping, and it's Henry. This isn't even about her – he should tell her, will tell her, that this isn't about all _that_.

So he does, says, "He's a bright kid. Smart, with a good sense of humor, and a great imagination, and he's exceedingly kind to my son. Patient. He never acts like Roland's a bother, and I remember being eleven, I don't think my choice of playmate would've been a three-year-old. But he never complains." He reaches for his spoon, pokes at half-soggy cereal as he confesses, "I like your son, Regina. He's a great kid, and I would like him even if you weren't you. So this isn't you taking advantage of a man who wants you, or me hoping if I play my cards right enough times it'll work out in my favor. Just a guy who would like to take his young friend on a pants-buying expedition after we blow too much money on fancy guitars at the music shop."

There's quiet for another second more, and then he's smiling and smug as she relents with, "The school pants have to be nice; even if the other kids don't notice – which they will – my mother can smell bargain clothes from a mile away. His school pants needs to be high-quality. And the shoes should be nice, too – no Payless. Anything else you get will be for weekends, so go wherever you guys want." Excellent, he thinks. And then he's glad he hadn't taken that bite of cereal he'd been contemplating, because she follows up her little ramble with, "Five hundred dollars should be enough?"

"My God, where are you planning on us shopping? Armani Kids?"

Her chuckle this time is warm and low – knowing, he supposes, but whatever the intent, it sounds sexier than he's sure it ought to considering they're talking about children's slacks.

"Just don't go _over_ that, that's all I mean."

"I don't think that will be a problem," he tells her confidently, absolutely certain he can get through a bit of back-to-school shopping without dropping half a grand.

"You say that now," she tells him, "but trust me. It adds up fast."

**.::.**

"Alright," Robin says to Henry, clapping his hands together and then rubbing his palms back and forth as he surveys the nearby sections of the Nordstrom they've just walked into. "Operation Fancy Pants is a go; where do we start looking?"

He'd decided on clothes first, then guitar, figuring he'd rather leave a pile of clothes baking in the trunk for a few hours than a $500 guitar and all the necessary accessories. Plus, with the prospect of guitar shopping on the horizon (something Henry's eyes had popped wide with excitement over when Robin had shown up across the street and pulled him from a game of Snap with Granny Lucas), he thinks clothes shopping will go a bit faster.

"Boys section," Henry tells him knowingly. "There's usually a spot for school pants. I think we need to go upstairs, though."

"Right," Robin tells him, pulling his phone out of his pocket and pulling up the email Regina had forwarded to refresh the dress code requirements. "Lead the way, then."

Henry walks, and Robin follows, scrolling down to the right part of the page, and muttering along with the listing as he reads: "'Dress cotton twill pants in khaki, black, or stone.' What the bloody hell color is stone?"

"It's like a grey," Henry tells him, and Robin scowls. Right. Well. _Like a grey_ isn't terribly specific and he doesn't want to send the boy home with the wrong pants – sort of defeats the purpose of saving Regina a trip, doesn't it?

So he decides, "We'll just get you some khakis. You probably need a couple of pairs, yeah?"

"Yeah, mom usually gets two khakis, two black, and a stone, I think."

Two khaki, two black, and they'll leave the stone for Regina to pick out. That's Robin's plan right up until he actually finds said pants and looks at the price tag. Fifty dollars for a pair of pants for a ten-year-old, he cannot actually believe it.

In fact, he shoots Regina a text just to make sure, asks, _50 bucks for a pair of pants?_

Her reply doesn't come for several minutes, not until he's sent Henry off to the changing room with a pair of each color, and a murmured, "Make sure you've got enough room to breathe, you know what I mean?"

All Regina has to say is: _500 making a little more sense now?_

_I wouldn't say that, no. But we'll get a few pairs._

_Thank you again._

_Anytime_.

"Hey, Robin!" Henry calls, and Robin pockets his phone again, calls _Yeah?_ in response. "Do these look okay?"

He heads back into the fitting room for inspection, and makes a note to leave the shirts and socks and what-all for elsewhere.

They get the shoes here, though, because Regina had insisted on not going cheap for those either. A pair of brown oxfords that Robin realizes a bit too late will only really go with the khaki pants, not the black, but well, that's half the boy's wardrobe at the moment, so that's probably fine. He nudges him toward black for the trainers, though, clinching the deal by finding a matching pair in his own size; Henry is over the moon to having matching Nikes.

The final total at the register reminds him why he never shops at bloody Nordstrom, when he finds half his budget gone over a few pairs of pants and two pairs of shoes.

"Don't I need shirts and stuff?" Henry asks as Robin hands over his debit card and his sanity, signing away a healthy chunk of that money he's so glad to have gotten his hands on (he's getting it all back, he reminds himself, less the cost of his own Nikes).

"We'll get some," Robin assures, "but not here."

He takes the boy to Gap Kids and Old Navy, because their shop windows are all emblazoned with comforting words like _40% OFF!_ and _$10 DENIM!_ respectively, and Robin vows to spend the remainder of that $500 on as much clothing as he possibly can to make it feel like they've at least gotten their money's worth today.

It's fun, he thinks, once they're in a place he has to worry less about the price, and more about simply getting things that they both like. A pair of jeans for Henry, and two for Robin. And then tops – just a few t-shirts for Robin, he's mostly alright on shirts, and it's not as though he has school to worry about. But Henry, he treats.

Oh, sure, he grabs a few staples. A grey cardigan, because the dress code had allowed it, and a black, sort of folded-collared fleece thing with a button at the neck that he grabs off a rack and holds up, saying, "Here, try this on. It's preppy as hell; I bet your grandmother would love it."

Henry looks it over, makes a little face, and then says, "Yeah. But Mom, too. It's not so bad," before adding it to the pile draped over his arm.

But they maybe go a bit overboard on the graphic tees (it's not his fault, though – who could ask him to pass over that Beatles shirt in Henry's size, or the one with a taco on a skateboard emblazoned with I DON'T WANNA TACO 'BOUT IT, or even that blue jumper they'd gotten with the sharks on it), but he manages to grab a few things that scream _Regina_ as well. Some rather plain, striped long-sleeves, thick and thin bands of hunter, navy and white, and one sort of waffled one in grey and cream.

Solid, neutral pieces that he adds to the pile with, "Your mum would like those, yeah?"

In the end, he blows Henry's budget by a good fifty dollars, but he doesn't figure he'll tell Regina that. They can call it a gift – if they can manage to haul it all to the car, he thinks as they sit with their feet surrounded by shopping bags while they scarf down cheap Chinese food in the mall food court.

And then it's on to the day's highlight: the music shop. They have an hour exactly, which should be plenty, because Robin knows exactly what he wants. An Epiphone Les Paul Standard in "vintage sunburst." Or maybe black – he'll decide for sure when he sees them.

And if it had been just him, alone, he's sure it would have been that easy. Pop in, play a few guitars just to be absolutely certain of what he wants, collect the extra things he needs, and then off he'd go. But it's the two of them, him and Henry, and, well, that's an entirely different game, now isn't it?

Henry has never played an electric guitar before, and so of course he wants to try it. He's gotten quite good over the last few months, so it doesn't sound half bad, but even with the songs he knows, he doesn't quite have the rock-ish intensity a boy of nearly-eleven wants in an electric. So he asks Robin to play him something "cool."

He goes with the Stones, because you simply can't go wrong. Plays the opening lick of "Satisfaction" on the display guitar, and watches Henry's face light up.

"Can you teach me to do that?" he asks eagerly. Robin checks his watch and figures they've a little bit of time, still, it's a relatively easy lick, and Henry's a quick study.

"I don't see why not," he says, guiding him step by step through the notes, slowly, before passing the guitar back to the boy. And then he talks him through it again, and again, and again, slowly, slowly, and then a bit faster, a little faster still.

It eats up a good chunk of that hour he'd thought they'd spend here, but before too long, Henry is getting that repeating lick stuck in the ears of every damn person in this shop, playing it over, and over, and telling Robin, "I'm doing it!" and "This is so cool!" and "I want one of these guitars!"

Robin laughs, pats a hand on Henry's shoulder and says, "How about this – since we're doing lessons at my place now anyway, we'll do your lessons on the acoustic, and spend the last fifteen minutes working with the electric for a bit. How's that sound?"

"Really?" Henry exclaims, eyes big as saucers.

"Really," Robin promises. It hadn't sounded as though Regina would _mind_ him teaching Henry the electric, after all. And they can work through things a bit more slowly there, maybe – have him practice on this acoustic at home during the week and then switch to the electric for a bit on his lesson nights. Keep up the mystery for a while before she has to plunk down her own hundreds on another instrument.

Henry lets out a triumphant whoop that's maybe a tad too loud for the music shop, but they don't get scolded, so Robin just shushes him with a laugh.

"Alright, try to contain yourself," he chuckles. "Now, we just need to find the salesperson to get the right color for us."

"What's wrong with this one?" Henry asks, brow furrowing. The guitar they'd ended up playing was a darker blue, a nice color, sure, but not one he'd been considering. He'd still like to admire the sunburst, and the black. Something classic or with a bit of edge. Something a bit less…blue.

"It's the floor model," Robin tells him. "We'll get ourselves a brand new one." The one he's been eyeing for weeks has been returned to the wall, and he points at it, says, "One like that, with the dark around the edges. It'll go well with our guitars, don't you think?"

Henry scowls, a pinched sort of look that is startlingly reminiscent of his mother. "I think it'd match _too_ much," he says. "I like the blue!"

Robin chuckles, says, "What about black? A good, solid black. A bit edgy and rock and roll."

But Henry shakes his head again, insists, "Nope. Blue."

The debate goes on for a little while, even as Robin redirects them into picking out an amp, and extra strings, a new strap for him and one for Henry, too, along with a few new songbooks for them to work on.

But somehow Robin finds himself loading that translucent blue finish carefully into his back seat, twenty minutes behind schedule, and baffled as to how a ten-year-old managed to best him into a bloody blue guitar.

**.::.**

Regina is not having a good day.

Not in the slightest.

It had started out well, at least. Had started out on time, had started out with strong coffee and weak traffic, and an impressive run of nine songs in a row on the car stereo shuffle that she'd rate as "favorites." And then there'd been Robin – taking care of the, it seems, increasingly burdensome task of buying clothes for her (as much as she hates to use the word) near-preteen. Making a point to spend time with Henry because she's asked for it, but more importantly because _he_ wants to. Because he likes her son.

She wants to believe that – does believe it. Wouldn't be able to let him do all this if she didn't, even though it feels… well, it's not exactly disentangling their lives, is it? But she'd rationalized, told herself she wasn't even going to see him. That they can maintain that space, that distance, that emotional boundary that she thinks is finally (hopefully) helping her to cut the ties of her heartstrings one by one. She's set herself a goal (which is ridiculous, but goals are good, goals help) – she wants him firmly back in the Friend Zone by the end of the summer. Wants to be over the hump of this bruised heart by the time she's elbow-deep in math and science homework.

So the morning had been alright, the morning had been good. But things have gone downhill from there. Avoiding Sidney forever was simply impractical – that she made it to Wednesday without having a private conversation with him was impressive. So they'd had lunch in the conference room, notes and plans spread in front of them as they'd chowed down on sandwiches from Grumpy's (he'd claimed to be as busy as she was, but somehow he'd managed to find the time to run down and brave the lunch-rush line for that veggie sandwich she likes, and a pressed juice, and a brownie she'd saved to nibble at during her afternoon coffee). It had been… less awkward than it could have been, but that had mostly been because Regina had conveniently not mentioned his weekend delivery – and neither had he, to her surprise.

It had been tolerable, but she'd been acutely aware of the way he'd scooted his chair closer to her (she'd taken the end seat, the head of the table – the spot with no neighbors so he couldn't slide right up beside her and give the wrong impression to anyone who might be peering through the glass walls). Their knees had bumped, pressed, and she'd had to subtly roll her chair a little to the left as she'd reached for her juice again.

An early afternoon conference call had kept the lunch from going too long, but had dragged on and on and on itself, throwing the rest of her day out of whack. By three, she'd been calling Archie Hopper's office and cancelling her appointment. She didn't really need it (she did, she does, she's realized in the last few days how badly she could use an impartial party to simply _talk_ to). She'd rescheduled for two weeks out, figuring that next week she'll be busy with Henry's birthday anyway. She'll just have to keep from having another personal crisis until then. (She still hasn't spoken to her mother, refuses to until she gets that damn apology, so that should help with keeping her sane.)

And then there'd been Kathryn. Plunking down in the spare chair in Regina's office during that aforementioned coffee break, with words like "divorce," and "moving," and "new start." A whispered confession of a job she's applying for in D.C., and "Please don't say anything to anyone else, but can I use you as a reference?"

Regina had swallowed her bite of brownie, felt it drop down into her belly like a heavy stone of surprising sadness, her heart clenching at the news. She doesn't have a glut of friends, after all, and Kathryn has been her office confidante for years. But she'd forced a sympathetic smile, and said, "Of course I will. Anything you need – if you're sure this is what you want?"

"It is," Kathryn had told her with a firmness that didn't quite match the pained doubt in her eyes. "I just can't come here every day, knowing that he's been with _her_. Knowing that she could come waltzing in at any time, wondering if Leo knew, if…" Kathryn had shaken her head, said, "I need to go somewhere new. Somewhere with fewer ghosts, you know?"

And Regina couldn't begrudge her that.

So she'd sipped her coffee, and asked about the new job, and wished her luck. Had ignored that squeezing sadness as she'd worked through the rest of her afternoon, and had made a point to scoot out to the parking structure while Sidney was still tied up on the phone, because he'd made two not-so-subtle passes by her office in the last thirty minutes, and quite frankly she hadn't wanted to be stuck in the elevator with him.

And now this.

She's sitting in her car in the parking structure, turning the key for the fifth time as if maybe this time her car will actually start instead of just sputtering uselessly. She doesn't need this. Doesn't _need_ this right now.

She'd worked a little late to avoid coming in early tomorrow, and it means that the lot is sparse already, most of the nine-to-fivers already gone home. And she doesn't know who to call. She has Triple-A, she could call for a tow or a jump, but she doesn't think it's the battery. Can't think of a reason why her battery would be dead when it was just fine this morning, and her lights are on an automatic off-switch – and presently working.

Her next thought is Robin – of course it is. But she dismisses the thought as soon as it's come. Her office is a half hour commute from home, and anyway, he's at work. Had texted her mid-afternoon to say that they'd run late in their errands and he'd brought Henry with him to the Rabbit Hole to get him a snack, and then he'd wanted to stay. And she can't keep _calling_ him for everything; it's ridiculous.

So she'll call Triple-A, in a minute. After she grips her steering wheel and bangs her head against it once, twice, three times gently in irritated frustration. This day. She is so ready to be _done_ with this day. She wants her home, her yoga pants, a good book and maybe a bath. At the very least, that cooling mask that she keeps tucked under the sink and maybe a few squares of dark chocolate.

She's busy imagining the bliss of calming lavender mud and warm steam when a knock on her window shoots her heart into her throat.

It isn't settled at all by the person doing the knocking – Sidney. Of course. Off the phone, and out of the office ten minutes behind her, and giving her a quizzical frown through the glass of her driver's side window.

She's not thrilled to see him, but then again… Well, it wouldn't hurt to try a jump, would it?

She pops her door open, and gives him a weary smile. "Hi."

"Everything alright?" he asks, settling a hand on the top of her door and leaning casually into the gap between it and the car body.

"Car won't start."

He frowns, asks, "Is it the battery? I have jumper cables in mine if you need a boost."

"It shouldn't be," she sighs. "The battery isn't that old, and it's not as though the weather is cold enough to screw it up." On the contrary, the back of her silk top is already sticking to her light bloom of sweat.

"Overheated maybe?" he suggests.

"It's been off for hours; it's not _that_ hot."

"True," he admits. "Did you check the fuses?"

Regina is an independent woman. A smart, capable, I-can-handle-these-things-myself type of woman. So it grates her a little bit to have to admit, "I… don't really know how to do that."

Sidney smirks, somehow kind and a little condescending all at once (or maybe it just reads that way to her?). "Do you have the car manual, by chance?"

That, she does have. Because it's hard to handle-these-things-oneself without it. So she unclips her seat belt, and leans over to pop open the glove compartment. By the time she sits back, Sidney has opened her car door the rest of the way, and set his briefcase on the ground next to his feet, crouching down in the open doorway as she flips to the Table of Contents, and then thumbs her way to the fuse box diagram.

"Alright," she murmurs, scowling at the boxes and numbers and labels. "Which fuse box do we need? There's three."

"Kill the ignition, and start it again for me?" he requests. "I want to hear it."

Regina gives him a glance as she turns the key back toward herself. "I didn't know you knew so much about cars."

"My nephew is a mechanic. I've picked up a few things."

She hums a little in response, and then turns the ignition again, hoping the car will have decided to get over its sudden tantrum and magically come to life. It doesn't, just whirs mockingly and does nothing.

Sidney frowns, and then mutters, "Maybe the fuel pump? It's probably under the hood – check the diagram?"

She skims down one list (nada), and then the other, and, "Aha! Fuse number four. And it looks like it's…" She flips back a page to the car diagram, and finishes, "in the trunk."

"Great," Sidney says with a smile, reaching for her trunk release at the same time she does. She expects him to stop when he sees her reaching, but he doesn't, and then she doesn't quite manage to halt her own movement in time, so they meet over the little gear, his fingers covering hers as they grip and pull.

She hears the hollow pop of the trunk releasing, and then slides her hand out from under his as politely as she can manage.

"Let's go have a look," he offers, and then he's up and gone, and Regina lets out the breath she hadn't realized she was holding.

She climbs out and smooths her skirt, then follows around to where he's already shifting things in her trunk, moving a palette of water she should just throw out, considering it's been baking here half the summer (but then, what if she stalled somewhere – like now – with no water?), and the first aid kit, running his hand along the inside wall of the trunk.

His voice is half muffled from the way he's bent and reaching, but she can still make out his, "Must be the other side…"

She itches to reach in and just find it herself (it's her car after all, and she's not helpless), but if the trunk release is any indication, her initiative wouldn't quell his in the slightest, and the last thing she wants is him pressed up against her "conveniently" while they search for the fuse box. So she just leans her elbow on the edge of the trunk and peers in, watches as he shifts her reusable grocery bags out of the way and then finds said panel cover a minute later, prying it off to reveal a strip of fuses.

"You said number four, right?" he asks her, and Regina nods, then realizes he's not looking at her, and says, _Yes._ A little grunt and then he's pulling back, a small plastic-capped metal square in his hand. He holds it up to the light and, "Sure enough. Blown."

He tilts it toward her so she can see the busted filament, and Regina sighs heavily. Great. Just great.

She plucks it from his hand and squints at it, scowling. She officially hates this tiny hunk of inconveniently overtaxed metal.

"It's an easy fix," Sidney tells her. "You just need another fuse of the right amperage to pop in – why don't you let me take care of it?" Regina glances up to find him smiling at her, holding his hand out for the fuse.

Yeah, that's not happening. She likes Sidney (less lately), he's a good guy, but she's not about to a) hand him a piece of her vehicle and b) give him an excuse to treat her, or put herself at all in his debt. Not when she's been trying to _discourage_ his little treats and favors.

"Unless you have one on you right now, then no," she politely declines, "If it's an easy fix like you said, I can get it taken care of."

His smile falters a little, and he reasons, "I can get a replacement fuse from my nephew – he probably won't even charge me. Really, I insist. Let me help."

Regina tightens her fist around the dud fuse and smiles tightly, shaking her head a little. "Thank you, but no." She tries another tactic, gives a faux little grimace and says, "I'm not very good at accepting help for simple things – I've been told it's one of my flaws."

"Strength isn't a flaw," he's quick to reassure. His left dimple popping as he teases, "And neither is stubbornness. But if you're sure—" (She says, _I am_ ) "—at least let me give you a lift home? I'm sure you need to get back to your son, right?"

She does. He's sitting at a bar by himself (under Robin's watchful eye, but he's working, he can't keep Henry occupied every minute), waiting for her to come pick him up, and she's already so very, very late. She wants to say no, really does, chews her lip and considers it, but…

It's just one ride home, she decides. She'll call Daddy tonight, see if maybe he can carve out the time to run her to work in the morning, or maybe let her borrow his car for the day. And then she'll get that replacement fuse and pop it into place, no problem.

So she swallows, tells Sidney, "Thank you. I appreciate it," and hopes this won't all be terribly uncomfortable.

**.::.**

It's… Well, it could be worse.

She gathers her things, locks her Mercedes, then slips into the passenger seat of his Lexus, and they're on their way.

There's jazz playing again, and it makes her think of the last time she was in this car. That blue dress. Thai food. Uncontrollable vomiting.

Stupid. She was so stupid. She should have politely turned him down and licked her wounds with someone else. But she didn't, she did this instead, and no amount of wishing it otherwise will change that. So she needs to stop it.

For a few minutes, there's mostly silence, and then he asks, "Is the music okay? I can change it if you don't like it."

"It's fine," she assures, and when silence threatens again, she adds, "I'm used to instrumental music; I grew up playing Classical piano. I didn't play a lot of jazz – it didn't have enough structure for my mother – but I liked it."

"How old were you when you started playing? I'm sure you've mentioned before, but I can't remember…"

"You know, I don't even remember," she muses, settling a bit in her seat and watching the buildings pass by outside. "Young. As far back as I can remember, there were lessons. We had a grand piano in our house growing up, and there's a picture of me somewhere, sitting at the keys on my father's lap. I couldn't have been more than three or four."

"Does your father play?"

"A little. Not like I did. Do, I suppose."

"I noticed your piano when I was there. It's beautiful. I hope you're still getting good use out of it."

"Mm. I try, but sometimes, it seems like it's a second mantle more than an instrument. Just somewhere to put pictures, or—"

"Flowers?" Sidney suggests a bit too innocently.

Regina purses her lips and thinks, _Just when it was starting to go well…_ "When I have them in the house," she concedes carefully, and then because it's polite, "Thank you, by the way."

"They seemed the least I could do. You were so upset when you ran off."

"Yes, well." Regina feels the twisting pinch of mortification in her belly, despising the fact that anyone, but especially Sidney, saw her the way she was on Saturday. Half-panicked and fleeing. Weak. She focuses very hard on not looking at him as she continues, "My mother is very good at pushing my buttons. You didn't exactly see me at my best."

"Looked pretty good to me," he tells her gently; she can hear his smile, and it makes her want to squirm.

Instead, she warns, "Sidney…"

"What?"

"Professional, remember?"

"We're not at work," he reasons. No, we are alone together in the car for the next half hour or so, and what a _wonderful_ idea that was...

"We're also not involved that way anymore," she reminds. "I'd really like things to go back to the way they were before. Please. I liked things the way they were; I liked being friends. I don't like… feeling like I have to tell you no all the time."

His answer is a simple, "So don't."

Regina gives him a look.

"Sorry. I'm sorry." She watches as he shakes his head, his gaze only half-focused on the road, seeking her out again and again, before he confesses earnestly, "I really like you, Regina."

"I know. And it's flattering, but…" God, this whole thing is a mess. She is so stupid, cannot believe she was this stupid. ( _Mother would believe it_ , she thinks, and then she tells herself not to think that way, she is not what her mother says she is.) "I should never have let things change the way they did, knowing how I feel about dating at work. I was having a bad day, I made a selfish choice that I thought would make _me_ feel better. But I know that you care about me, and I shouldn't have done that unless I was sure that I would be able to… change how I felt. That wasn't fair to you."

It's the most direct she's been with him, she thinks, and she hopes it's enough. Hopes it is clear without being hurtful. For a few moments, he doesn't speak, and she worries she hadn't quite accomplished that last aim, that this ride is about to get even _more_ awkward as they're joined by a full back seat of hurt feelings.

But then he finally says something, a somewhat disappointed but mostly hopeful, "But you had a good time? On the dates?"

"Yeah," she lies. "I did."

"Well, that's something at least," he concedes with a little half-smile.

 _Mission accomplished_ , she thinks, breathing out some of the tension she'd been holding.

She can work with this – with near-honesty, with almost-clarity. Can smile herself, and offer a gentle – but firm – "No more bouquets, okay?"

"Okay," he agrees, and then he's leaning her way a little, lips curved and dimples popping as he asks, "What if it's your birthday?"

It's a joke, so she laughs, shakes her head, and deadpans, "Sidney."

"Sorry. Sorry," he chuckles, before asking, "So, does Henry play?"

"What?"

"The piano. You learned because of your dad, right?"

"Oh." She'd nearly forgotten their earlier topic of conversation – but it's a welcome change. "Well, no, I learned because Mother wanted me to play an instrument, but I tried, with Henry. Reluctant as I am to ever agree philosophically with my mother, I think she was right about the music. It's good for a child, teaches discipline, and creativity, and precision. Patience, and the value of hard work. But Henry never had much interest in the piano, and I didn't want to force him. He's in guitar lessons, though, and he _loves_ those."

"Where does he go?"

"Next door. We have a neighbor who plays, so I hired him to teach Henry." She shifts a little, presses her thumb to her phone to unlock it and check that she doesn't have any texts or emails. She's just fidgeting – for some reason, talking about Robin with Sidney makes her nervous. Makes her feel like she's hiding something. Maybe it's the fact that last time she was near a car with Sidney, they'd shared that unfortunate kiss and then she'd scaled Robin like a tree. She clears her throat softly in an attempt to clear her mind of the memory of calloused fingertips against slippery, sensitive places, and tries to remember they were talking about _Henry_ , for God's sake. "He's having a lot of fun. That's where he was today, actually – his teacher was getting a new guitar, so he took Henry with."

"That was nice of him," Sidney comments, before asking curiously, "Does he do that with all his students?"

"Henry's his only student," Regina tells him, and then she realizes that may not be true. She _thinks_ he is, but Robin could be teaching other people, too. He has entire mornings to fill, after all. "As far as I know, anyway. Our arrangement is… a mutual favor, I suppose. Henry wanted to learn, Robin needed some extra cash. It worked out for everyone."

"Oh, I've met him," Sidney realizes, and Regina frowns until he adds, "He came to the office, didn't he?"

"Yes. He did, that's right," she remembers. It seems likes ages ago now, like another life almost. But he had come, all those months ago, back before she'd felt the gut-ripping sting of his lies, back before she'd even _liked_ him. Or wanted him, at least. Back when this all started, he'd come to help Henry pick out his guitar, and ended up playing games in the break room with the guy she would use as his rebound. Lovely.

"Hey, there's a great little Italian place about ten minutes from here," Sidney says suddenly, interrupting her thoughts. "Do you want to grab some dinner?"

Okay. Maybe her little moment of honesty hadn't been _quite_ as effective as she'd hoped…

"I promised Henry I'd eat with him," she tells him, making a point to color her voice with apology. "They lost track of time this afternoon, so he ended up at work with Robin. He's still at the bar; I need to pick him up there."

Sidney scoffs in a way that makes her bristle defensively, or maybe it's the derisive way her says, "He brought your nine-year-old to a _bar?_ "

"Henry's eleven on the 15th, not that that—" She shakes her head. That isn't the point. The point is, "It's a sports bar at seven o'clock on a Wednesday. It's family-friendly, mostly people eating dinner right now. Henry likes their burgers, and they're airing the Orioles game so I said we could stay."

Sidney's overblown indignance settles at that, and he frowns curiously, then aims a smile her way, and says, "That actually sounds like fun. I can't remember the last time I watched an Orioles game – and I do love burgers." Regina feels that surge of anxiety in her belly again as he urges, "Just tell me where we should be headed."

It wasn't an invitation – at least, she hadn't meant it as one – but it seems Sidney feels otherwise. She opens her mouth to correct him, but there's a sudden sharp voice in her head that sounds suspiciously like Mother, echoing words like "ungrateful" and "rude." He's doing her a favor, and it's not like it would be a date. Henry will be there. Hell, _Robin_ will be there. So sure, okay, she'll buy the man a burger – as a thank you for driving her home. Nothing more.

Even if it makes her stomach twist anxiously.

So she doesn't correct him. Instead, she tells him to keep headed toward her place, and she'll let him know when to deviate. And then she lets him switch the conversation to his favorite topic – her – and hopes she doesn't regret this.

**.::.**

Regina's running late, but she'd told him that hours ago. Had said she was caught up at work, running a little behind, and he'd told her not to worry about it, that Henry was fine here, to simply show up whenever she could.

But he hasn't heard from her yet – hopes she's already left and just not told him – and he tells himself that that is why he keeps glancing at the door every time it opens. He tells himself it's not because he's pathetically mad for her.

But whatever the reason, he's looking, and so he sees her walk in – sees the anxious set of her shoulders, the pinch of her lips, and then he sees why and flushes with some combination of anger and jealousy and concern. Fucking Sidney, two steps behind her. When she heads for the bar and Sidney falls into sync with her and lifts a hand to her back, Robin watches Regia stiffen, sees her eyes flit in the direction of the man at her side in a way that is not at all pleased, and that flush sharpens more toward concern and indignant irritation on her behalf.

And then he's got beer spilling over his fingers because he apparently can't do two things at once when one of those things involves Regina Mills. He curses softly, looks away from her, fixes himself and the pint he'd been pouring. By the time he's able to bring his attention back to her, they're standing next to the bar, Regina gripping the back of a chair and Sidney hovering just behind her.

"Where's Henry?" she asks, brow knit.

"He's back in the kitchen with Neal," Robin says. "I'll take you back." He flicks his gaze to Sidney and says what he hopes is casual, convincing, "Sorry, employees and parents only in the prep space."

Sidney's mouth twitches slightly and then he smiles, says, "Of course," and then, "Can I get a beer while I wait?"

"We're gonna stay and watch the game," Regina explains, and there's something in her voice, a weariness that he doesn't like, but he nods, and asks Sidney to pick his poison.

Robin pours the Stella he asks for, and then nods Regina toward the back, watching as she and Sidney dance slightly through the unnecessarily cramped space around the bar stool before she frees herself and strides toward the other end of the bar.

They're barely out of sight before Robin asks, "Are you okay? What's going on?", leading her into August's office rather than the kitchen. He wants a moment of privacy, and doesn't figure they'll get it once Henry's seen her.

Regina exhales heavily and sighs, "My car wouldn't start – blown fuse." He watches her tuck her hair behind her ear as she explains (and he can place that edge of weariness now – she's annoyed, frustrated, and it colors her every word), "He offered to drive me home, and then he asked if I wanted to stop for dinner. When I said I'd promised Henry we'd eat here, he said that sounded great." She makes a face, a sort of irritated, uncomfortable expression like she's swallowed something sour. "I didn't want to be a bitch about it; he just went an hour out of his way to drop me off."

Robin scoffs, and tells her, "He's into you; trust me, it wasn't a hardship."

Her shoulders tighten, arms crossing over her chest. "It certainly wasn't convenient for him."

"Regina, trust me," he repeats, resisting the urge to reach out and touch her. To settle his hands on her shoulders, or weave their fingers, or really anything other than standing a foot apart while she's still fighting off discomfort and he's so itching to grow a possessive streak he has no right to. "He got how many minutes of your undivided attention, and roped himself a dinner date – it's worth the long drive home. Guys will go to great lengths to score points."

One brow lifts pointedly. "Says the man who just bought my son pants."

"For _Henry,_ " he reminds over the stab of guilt and offense in his middle. "Not because I like you, because I like _Henry_ ; I told you."

But she's already waving him off – literally. Lifting a hand and letting it flutter dismissively as she apologizes, "I'm sorry. I… I didn't mean that. Thank you for taking him today."

"No thanks necessary. We had fun." And because he still wants to touch her, to soothe, and can't, he offers, "And if you need a car for tomorrow, you can borrow mine."

Her shoulders sink, relaxing on a soft breath, her whole face melting from tense to relieved for a moment. And that's something, then, isn't it?

She tells him sincerely, "Thank you – truly. Sidney already offered to pick me up, and I already told him no, but I really don't have much in the way of convenient backups. So this helps. A lot."

"Yeah, he's definitely not upset he had to drive all the way out here – and he needs to back the hell off," Robin mutters. The itching urge to strangle the guy sipping Stella at his bar has him pocketing his fists. What an absolute tosser.

"Yes. Well," Regina says tightly. "He's lead on my most lucrative account; I need to tread lightly."

"That's a really shit position he's put you in."

Something flickers in her eyes, and then they drop, focusing on one of the buttons of his shirt as she says quietly, "I put myself there. I went out with him, I said yes."

"And then you said no," he points out, ducking a little in an attempt to meet her gaze. "He should take it like a man." It's not as if he can't sympathize with the agony of loving this woman and being denied her, but somehow Robin manages to keep from bothering her every minute of the day. Surely Sidney can sack up and do the same. But it's no use rehashing, and she's uncomfortable enough without him pressing the issue, so Robin switches topic. "Do you know the fuse you need? Maybe I can get it for you, get you back into your own car sooner."

"Yeah, I kept it," she tells him, adjusting her purse and unzipping it, digging inside as she mutters, "Sidney made the same offer, but I didn't want to take him up on it. But since I already need to write you a check anyway…" She fishes the little fuse from the depths and holds it out to him. "You can just add it to my tab."

Robin tries not to skim his fingertips over her palm as he takes it from her, he really does...

"I'll try to get it to you by the end of the day tomorrow. I can stop by and grab your keys, make the switch and—"

"Tomorrow?" Regina interrupts, suddenly frowning. "When I'm going to have your car?"

Robin smiles, points out, "I have other friends. I can call in a favor if I need a ride, or a car to borrow for a bit. Let me worry about that."

Her tongue slips out and traces her bottom lip before she bites into it, that little wrinkle still between her brows as she considers. In the end, she concedes, "Only if it's not putting you – or anyone else – out. I can always get it towed, or—"

"Nah, that's stupid," Robin dismisses, "It's just a fuse. I'll fix it. And when you're ready to go tonight, Henry's things are still in my trunk."

"Okay. Thank you." She sucks in a breath that he thinks is meant to steady her, but she never quite makes it to the inhale, instead she's frowning again and asking, "Do you need the car to bring your guitar home? We can walk home tonight; I can come get the keys in the morning."

"Guitar's no problem, it's more the amp and accessories. But I can bring those home later," he assures. "Or," he adds with a smile, "I can put them in the car when you leave, and Henry can show you all the bells and whistles, and the lick he learned today, and I can stop by tomorrow with my key and get it then."

She gives him what he thinks is supposed to be a smile, but it doesn't complete, ends up more like a grimace, and she's still carrying herself with that damnable tension as she agrees, "Alright, let's do that."

He'd hope the prospect of Henry's excitement might be enough to punch through her dark cloud, but it seems even that has been ineffective. So he gives in, finally, to the bone-deep need to comfort her, and asks, "Would it be alright if I hugged you? I can't stand it when you're all nervy and there's nothing I can do about it."

Regina stiffens, defensive when she argues, "I am not nervy. I'm…" She seems stuck, then, because she is vibrating with anxiety, they both know that she is. She finishes with, "It's been a long day," and then adds, "But yes. You can."

Robin reaches out and draws her in close, closing the gap between them as he wraps his arms snugly around her, and reveling in the little sigh she lets loose as she drops her forehead to rest against his shoulder. He can't resist lifting his hand to comb fingers through her dark tresses, but he manages not to drop a kiss to the top of her head (he does press his nose to it, just for a moment, to breathe her in).

Her voice is soft against his shirt when she confesses, "I don't want to sit through this whole game with him. I've been trying to encourage him _away_ from me, not toward spending more time together."

"You want me to ask him to leave?" Robin offers, all too willing to boot the guy out on his arse. He'll make up a reason, come up with something. Hell, he's fairly certain there's a "We have a right to refuse service to anyone for any reason" sign hanging somewhere behind the bar. He doesn't even need to lie.

But Regina sighs, "No," and says, "It'd be more trouble than it's worth. And he did drive me all the way out here."

"Doesn't mean you owe him dinner."

"I know." She lifts her head then, and her eyes are so close he can see the subtle shifts of chocolate and espresso in her irises, the lamplight hitting them just right. His gaze drops to her lips as her tongue peeks out again, and no, no way, pull yourself together, man. He cannot kiss her right now, even if she exhales a breath that smells like spearmint, even if he can feel her slow inhale against his belly.

Because then he'd be the asshole who kisses her when she's upset, when another guy has her feeling off-kilter and taken advantage of, and he won't be that. He'll be here when she needs, will let her work off the tense anxiety of that jerk at the bar when she comes to him, but he won't start it. He won't do that. He won't.

Her lips press together again, and he tears his gaze away, back up to hers, only to find it wide and open and waiting. She's been watching him watch her, and, "It would be a terrible idea," he manages to rasp. (Her _Yeah_ in response is mostly breath.) He curls his fingers through her hair again, tucks it behind her ear, and lets his hand skim down until the backs of his fingers rest against her beating pulse. "You'd regret it. I don't want to be something you regret."

One of her brows lifts and falls, her eyes going from wanting to wry. "Too late," she whispers, and it's the perfect wake-up call, the perfect splash of cold water. Because they've been here before, and nothing ever changes. He's already broken her heart in a way that can't be properly mended, and he refuses to keep ripping stitches just because he knows how soft her lips are.

"Right." Robin forces himself to disentangle, to ignore the way her body seems to sway toward him for a moment as he takes a little step back to put space between them. "We're supposed to be getting Henry."

"Yes. Henry," she says, clearing her throat and crossing her arms tightly over her chest. She doesn't look any less miserable than she did a minute ago, but at least this time it's a familiar misery – one of his own making. She gives him a sad little smile and says, "We should go do that; we've been back here a while."

His hands are on her shoulders before he can stop them, but he restrains himself to simply smoothing his palms down to her elbows as he urges, "Stay at the bar; I'll take care of you guys."

"Scoping out the competition?"

"I'm not competing for anything," he tells her, "and even if I was I'm pretty sure I won, considering that after your last date with him, you ended up with me."

He politely declines to mention that they were two seconds from snogging where they stand less than a minute ago, but he knows they're both thinking it.

"Right," she swallows. "Just keeping an eye on me then?"

"Keeping an eye on him," Robin corrects. "Now, let's go free your son from his servitude; I don't think alone in an empty office is the best place for us, under the circumstances."

Regina's chuckle is hollow and bitter, and it's not until her muttered, "Certainly not after the last time," that he realizes just what he's said. But she's already sucking in another steadying breath and heading for the door, so he lets it drop, and simply follows.

**.::.**

_Note to self_ , Regina thinks as they walk the few feet to the kitchen door, _No more alone time with Robin_.

She wants to say she can't believe she ended up two breaths from kissing him again, but she can. She really can. But at least this time they'd managed to keep themselves in check.

Henry is a good distraction, the best distraction, and when she pushes into the kitchen, she can't help but smile at the sight of him. He's standing near the grill, watching as the man there cooks what Regina thinks is a burger (it's hard to see fully from this angle), and he's wearing an apron that is far too big for him, a handkerchief tied around his forehead to match the man he stands beside. Maybe she's biased, but she thinks he's perhaps the cutest line cook ever.

"What are you doing in here?" she asks teasingly, just as Robin comes through the door behind her, and Henry finally looks up to realize she's there.

His whole face lights up as he explains, "I'm learning how to cook!"

She wants to point out that he knows how to cook quite a few things – she's taught him – but that's her anxiety talking, and he looks so proud of himself. So she smiles and says, "Are you then?"

"He's gotten pretty good at pouring Cokes," Robin tells her, leaning against one of the prep tables nearby as he does. "Short of pulling pints and mixing drinks, there's not much else I could teach him about bartending – and none of that's exactly legal, is it?" Not outside the _Mad Men_ era, he's right about that. "Neal offered to make him a line cook for the evening. Plus, he's easier to keep an eye on in here than out there."

"Hey, I don't need to be kept an eye on," Henry protests, and Regina thinks there's no way that's grammatically correct, but it's also not worth correcting at the moment, and certainly not in front of the men.

Regina looks to the other man – Neal. She's heard his name before, but never seen him. He's always back here working away. He looks about Robin's age, darkish hair, she thinks, judging by his goatee and that hair she can see at his nape, and he has a friendly smile for Henry. He doesn't look polished in any way; Mother would hate him on sight. So Regina offers a smile and tells him, "Thank you."

"Yeah, no problem," he shrugs her off, flipping the burger he's been tending and then slinging an arm over Henry's shoulders. "He's a good kid – smart. And real good with sharp knives, too."

Regina gives him a look of alarm, brows shooting up, eyes popping wide. "Excuse me?"

"I'm kidding," Neal grins, and Regina lets out that breath she'd just held. "He's been assembling burgers and pouring dips."

"And I made a house salad for table five!" Henry pipes up.

"And a better house salad The Rabbit Hole has never seen," Robin praises, reaching over to steal a tomato slice that's waiting on a cutting board nearby.

Henry puffs up a little at the praise, hooking his thumbs into the tie of his apron (it's doubled back to wrap around his belly, too big to tie in the back). Regina takes them in for a second, these three men, Robin munching his tomato, Neal turning back to add cheese to that burger, and Henry preening over his salad-making skills, and she is suddenly so thankful that Robin had thought to call this morning. So glad they ran out of time and ended up here. Henry's had a guys' day – one that's left him happy and confident and comfortable – and it hits something in her middle, has her heart clenching gratefully.

She turns to Robin, presses the fingers of her still-crossed arms more tightly into her biceps as she tells him sincerely, "Thank you for today. It's exactly what I wanted."

She doesn't have to elaborate on that, judging by the way his expression softens for her. His, "Anytime," has a bit of weight to it, the gravity of what she's asked him to do for Henry's sake settling over the word. But he's all light and casual again when he's urging, "You go on – I'll be out in a minute to get your orders. And you wouldn't want to keep your guest waiting any longer."

Regina rolls her eyes, that nauseated twist of anxiety wrenching in her belly again, but he's right. They've been gone forever, and it's rude, and she has no real explanation for the time she spent nearly kissing the neighbor again while Sidney drank his beer.

"What guest?" Henry asks, untying his apron with a scowl, and tugging off his bandana.

"Sidney," Regina answers, not at all surprised when that scowl just deepens.

Henry is none too pleased when he questions, "What's he doing here?"

"My car wouldn't start, so he drove me," she explains, adding, "He's staying to watch the game," and then turning her attention back to Neal to say, "It was nice to meet you. Thanks again, for letting him help out."

"He's welcome in my kitchen any time," Neal assures her, before telling Henry, "I'm calling you back here if we get a rush, okay?"

"Yeah, okay," Henry mutters, but he's distracted now, trudging toward Regina with a look that she guesses means she's about to get an earful from her ten-year-old about her life choices. Peachy.

"Henry, say thank you," she urges, and he perks up just enough to be polite as he thanks Neal. Regina and Robin share a look as she turns to lead her son back out toward the bar.

"Sidney's watching the game _with_ us?" Henry asks almost immediately.

"He is."

"Why?"

"Because he drove me all the way home, and he didn't have to," she answers calmly.

"Are you guys gonna go on another date?"

Regina's answer is immediate and sound: "No, we are not." And just for good measure, she stops him right before the doorway to the bar itself, turns him to face her, and says, "And don't talk about those things in front of him; it's rude. He's not Robin, he's not your friend, okay?" He looks at her for a moment, then nods skeptically. "He did me a favor, so I'm buying him a burger. That's it."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure," she swears, looking him dead in the eye so he knows she means business.

"Good," Henry says with a nod, "Because I don't really like him."

She doesn't like him all that much at the moment either, but politeness demands she point out: "You don't really know him."

"We've met," Henry reminds. "He's weird."

"Henry, he's not—"

"He talks to me weird," Henry interrupts. "Like he doesn't know how, or like he doesn't really care, he's just waiting for you to show up. And then as soon as you do, he talks over the top of my head like I don't even exist. He only talks to me if you do, but he doesn't actually care."

Regina blinks, stares. He'd made his dislike for her with anyone other than Robin perfectly clear, but she's honestly a bit floored that he has this much of an opinion on Sidney. And that he never shared it with her before.

"I... I didn't know you felt that way," she says, and his response has a lance of guilt piercing through her heart.

A shrug, and, "You never asked."

She hadn't. It had been two dates, two dates that had not at all involved Henry, and so, no, she hadn't asked. She would have, eventually, if things had gotten serious. If she was interested enough in someone, he'd have to come home, meet her son and pass the Henry Test. But Sidney had already met Henry – she could have asked from the start what her son thought of him. Under the circumstances, she probably wouldn't have gotten an unbiased answer, but she could have asked. Maybe she should have? Or maybe she's just looking for reasons to feel guilty.

Still, she thinks of "your nine-year-old" and realizes that for a man who can remember her favorite everything, Sidney has been almost entirely uninterested in the most important thing in her life.

The thought stays with her as they head back into the bar, as Henry trots a few paces ahead of her and takes an open seat to Sidney's right, the first one on the long side of the bar, and one that forces her to choose between settling into the single space on Sidney's left, or the spot to Henry's right. She chooses the spot next to Henry, both because it gives her a better view of the two of them (and she's curious now to see how this man really treats her son), and because it rules out any chance knee or elbow bumping.

Sidney's beer is gone already, she notices, but then, they'd been in the back for a while. The smile he gives her when she slides onto her stool is tight, and Henry's right. He doesn't even _look_ at him.

"I was beginning to think you'd snuck out the back," Sidney jokes, and there's an idea.

She forces a smile of her own, and lies, "I was learning the best way to make a house salad, courtesy of my son."

Henry had already been looking up at the TV screen, catching up on what he'd missed of the beginning of the game, but he glances her way at that. And then he looks back to the TV, not a peep about her lie. Regina's not sure if she should be happy about that or not.

"Sorry we kept you waiting," Regina continues, as Sidney passes over the menu that had been sitting to his left.

It doesn't escape her notice that he had only gotten them two menus.

**.::.**

_Watching the game, my arse_ , Robin thinks as he walks back into the bar a minute later to find that wanker at the end of the bar nearest the TV screen – which means he has his back to it. Robin supposes he can still see any of the handful of other screens around the room, but he doubts he's looking. He notices Henry parked between Regina and Sidney and wonders whose choice that was as he passes Ruby on her way back to check on her tables, murmuring a thank-you for covering the bar while he'd stepped away.

"Next time maybe ask," she teases, winking as she saunters away, and Robin has the decency to look mildly ashamed. He had just disappeared on her without notice, hadn't he?

And he's paying for it now – refills three drinks on his way over to their end of the bar, and brings a fresh Stella for Sidney, since he imagines the man will want another. He pours a Coke for Henry and gambles on a cider for Regina (grabs a bottle of the brand they've just gotten in rather than her usual draft), carefully ferrying all three drinks to their spaces and sliding them into place as he asks if they're ready to order.

Regina lifts a brow at her bottle, reads the label and asks, "Dirty Mayor?"

"It's got ginger in it – gives it some kick. You'll like it," he assures, and she looks doubtfully amused for a moment before she lifts it to her mouth, and sips, and swallows.

He watches her lick the flavor from her lips, dutifully ignores Sidney's, "I think we're ready, yes," until she smiles, and quirks her brows in concession.

"It's good," she agrees. "And yes, we're ready."

Robin works right to left, starts with Sidney, who orders a swiss burger with extra mushrooms, and seasoned waffle fries. Henry gets his usual cheeseburger and fries, but amends to the seasoned fries the second Robin has turned his attention to Regina.

"Got it," Robin assures him, before asking his mother, "And for you, milady?"

She smirks at the endearment, turns her bottle idly back and forth, and requests, "Grilled chicken burger, no onion, no cheese, no bun. Extra lettuce. And fries."

No onion, no cheese, no bun, extra lettuce. He imagines the plate (a chicken breast with a heap of lettuce, a bit of tomato and avocado), and can't help teasing her, "You sure you don't just want grilled chicken, a side salad, and fries?"

It's essentially what she's asked for, only she's gotten herself a poor excuse for salad.

"That's not on the menu," she shrugs, looking just a bit sheepish. Caught.

"It can be," he assures. "I'll bill you for the burger. Put in for the side salad."

"August won't care?"

Robin should absolutely not flirt with her in front of Sidney, he knows that much. Flirting in front of idiots who drive an hour out of their way and then pressure women into dinner dates isn't likely to end in anything more than a pissing contest Regina doesn't deserve to be in the middle of. But it's not flirting if he teases her a bit, is it? And especially not over a running joke she has with the bar, not him.

So he grins and tells her, "Not if you take that 20 taped above the cash register."

Her eyes sharpen, lips twitching against a smile as she vows, "Never."

Robin's and Henry's laughter comes at the same time, and the boy immediately begins telling Sidney about the time the bar owner wouldn't let Regina pay.

Robin takes the moment of distraction to assure her in low tones, "Don't worry about the special order; August likes you, and you'd be getting a pile of veg anyway. What do you want?"

"Grilled chicken, a side salad, and fries," she admits, her gaze sliding sideways to watch the story unfold. Robin follows and notices Sidney seems to be splitting his attention between listening to Henry and glancing over at Regina, and somehow that makes him angrier than the man needling his way into dinner in the first place.

He bites back the urge to tell him to at least give the kid his full attention when he's trying to tell a story, and steps away to put their order in. When he stalks off toward the kitchen again, it's as much to walk away from the blinding urge to deck the man who is trying to move in on this family that Robin has no rights to in the first place as it is to tell Neal about Regina's order.

He announces his arrival with a terse, "Mate, I need something off-menu."

"Christ, seriously?" Neal groans. "Who's being a picky bitch now?"

"Regina."

Neal pauses a moment, and then says, "Oh," and, "What does she want?"

"Grilled chicken burger, no onion, no cheese, no bun, extra lettuce," Robin rattles off. "And fries." Neal makes a face that rather perfectly expresses Robin's feelings on the order, a sort of perplexed amusement. "I told her I'd get her a grilled chicken breast, a side salad, and fries," Robin continues, "But I thought maybe— Do we still have the stuff for that salad special from yesterday? The goat cheese and the pecans?"

"Yeah, I think so," Neal confirms. "If Henry didn't finish the candied pecans – he got hungry, so I took the leftovers out as a snack."

"I think she'd like that," Robin suggests. "I think she likes goat cheese. Could we do that salad with the grilled chicken breast on top?"

Neal's brows lift slowly, and he asks, "You want that breast sliced for her?"

"If it's not too much trouble."

"Man, just fix whatever you fucked up and ask her out again already," Neal taunts him, and Robin scowls. "And stop using salads to flirt."

"I'm not using salad to flirt," Robin defends. "I just want her to have what she wants."

"We have a whole menu of stuff, and you've already got her like two steps past anything that's readily available so she can 'have what she wants.'" Neal points out. "And you watched her kid all day. You're flirting."

"It's not going to happen," Robin tells him firmly. "I'm not trying to make it happen. I'm just—"

"In love with her?"

"Shut up, and make the damn salad," Robin retorts, ignoring Neal's chuckle and his _One sweetheart salad, coming right up_ , as he makes his exit.

"Tosser," Robin mutters as he pushes his way out of the kitchen.

For all his taking the piss out of Robin, though, Neal comes through. The salad he sets down in front of Regina a short while later is all mixed greens and goat cheese, diced apples and that sliced chicken breast, with vinaigrette on the side. He sets her fries next to it, along with barbeque sauce for dipping.

Regina turns away from whatever conversation she'd been having with Sidney (Robin has been keeping an eye but trying _not_ to keep an ear out, on account of he finds himself annoyed by every syllable this man utters to a woman Robin knows has no interest in listening), and gives Robin a look. Head tilted, lips pursed, but eyes warm.

"That is not a side salad," she chides him, and Robin shrugs.

"I asked Neal for grilled chicken and a salad, and this is what he sent out."

He shouldn't lie to her, after everything, but it's a fib. A little white lie. Forgivable, he hopes.

She doesn't buy it for a second, murmuring, "Uh huh," and lifting her fork.

But she's smiling for now, and for Robin, that's enough.

**.::.**

It could have been worse.

If Regina had a philosophy for Sidney Glass, a tagline for their relationship (for lack of a better word), that would be it: _It could have been worse._ Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

They'd watched the game, and she'd eaten her salad, and she had tried, honestly, to keep Sidney engaged with Henry. But aside from a solid fifteen minutes they managed to spend talking about his birthday plans next week, Sidney had always somehow managed to lead the conversation away, or to shift his attention back to her after just a few minutes. Henry was right – he paid just _enough_ attention to him, but didn't put in any extra effort. Certainly not what you'd expect from a man as enamored with a woman as Sidney is with her.

He should have _wanted_ to talk to him, _wanted_ to know him. Sidney spends all day with Regina, but Henry, Henry is new-ish. And Henry is her _son_ , and… and she finds herself grateful for the points gone unscored in the top of the ninth, for the quick end to the game, and an excuse to say their goodnights and head home.

"Are you sure I can't drive you?" Sidney had asked, no less than three times, even as Regina had stood next to the driver's side door of Robin's car, his key added to the ring hooked over her thumb as she waited for Robin and Henry to schlep out the amp and guitar from the back room of the bar.

"Sidney, I'm sure," she had repeated herself, holding her keys up to jingle. "Robin can walk to work tomorrow; I can take his car. Thank you for your help tonight, but I'm all set."

He'd relented, finally, looking none too happy about it as he'd said goodnight to Henry (not a word for Robin, surprise, surprise) and headed for his own car. Robin had hovered, had popped open the passenger door for Henry, had stepped into the space of the open door as Henry had buckled in, Robin's head and shoulders ducked down into the car to talk with her son.

He'd stayed that way until she'd settled in herself, clipped her seat belt into place. They were talking about the guitar, Robin and Henry, about "Satisfaction," and Henry showing her how he can play it. How to turn the amp on and plug the guitar in so that it'll work right.

"I don't have to tell you a guitar's not a toy, but you should definitely have fun with the Stones, so don't be too serious, alright?"

"Got it. Not too serious," Henry agrees. "Can I play some other stuff on it, too? Songs from my lessons?"

Robin starts to say _Sure_ , but Regina interrupts, pointing out, "It's getting late. I think it'll be 'Satisfaction' and then bed, Mister."

As Henry _Awws_ his protest, Regina meets Robin's gaze across the front seats.

"Text me when you're home safe, alright?" he requests, and she rolls her eyes just as Henry points out _It's only five minutes away._ But she knows why he's asking. Sidney hasn't pulled out yet, a fact she thinks they're both acutely aware of, but hopes very much that Henry is not.

She opens her mouth to tell Henry that Robin is just being polite, but before she can, he's speaking again, crouching a bit into the open space of the door and looking Henry in the eyes as he says, "Hey, listen to me – man to man, alright?" Henry nods, his face going serious as he focuses. "It's important to look after the people you care about. It's part of being an honorable guy. And it's even more important when the people you care about have had a bad day—and your mom, she may not look like it, she may not be acting like it, but she's had a bad day. She had to work late, her car won't start, some guy offered to do her a favor and then crashed her dinner plans with her kid."

"Robin," Regina warns, because Henry doesn't need to have it framed like that, true as it may be.

"She's had a bad day," Robin continues, "And I know your house is only a five minute's drive, and I know your mum can take care of herself – she's one of the smartest, strongest women I've ever known." Regina's heart shoots up into her throat and sticks there, the sudden surge pushing tears into her eyes that she has to blink away quickly lest they be seen. "She's tough, and she's got it all together, your mum. She's raised you all on her own, and done a great job, and she doesn't need some tosspot acting like she can't handle herself. But even people who can take care of themselves need to know sometimes that someone's thinking of them. That someone cares that they make it home alright, that they matter."

He drops his index finger onto Henry's knee, punctuates his words with it as he tells him, "A good man takes care of the people who matter to him. So she's going to roll her eyes at me when I ask her to text me—don't think I didn't see that—" he adds, glancing over to her with a smirk, one she answers with a smile that's far too melty for the relationship she's trying to have with him (but how can she _not_ when he's saying the things he is – they're for her as much as for Henry, she knows they are). "But that's alright. And she might text me or she might not – and that's alright too. But now she knows that I care about you guys, that I'll be thinking of you and hoping you're home, safe and sound and all that. And knowing that, that's important, yeah?"

Henry nods, and gives him a "Yeah, it is," in response.

"Good." Robin pats a palm down on Henry's knee, then pushes himself up again with a grunt as he tells him, "Now, I care very much about you and your mum, so I'd like very much for you to let me know you're home safe. Can you do that for me?"

"Absolutely," Henry agrees, and Regina clears her throat and finally weighs in on the conversation.

"I'll text," she assures Robin, before looking to Henry and saying, "And that's how I show Robin that _he_ matters. I make sure he knows we're safe. Even if he already knows we will be."

"So he won't worry," Henry says, and she bobs her head.

"That's right." Her gaze shifts to Robin's and holds there, the two of them looking at each other in a way that feels far too weighted for a simple goodbye after dinner and a ballgame. And then she says, "But we should be going; it's getting late."

Robin lets his hand tap twice on the roof of the car, a hollow parting pat, and tells her, "Drive safe. Take care of my guitar."

"We will!" Henry promises. "And we'll text!"

Robin is chuckling as he shuts Henry's door, telling him, "You'd better."

A turn of the key has the engine rumbling into life (and what a lovely sound that is), and then Regina is fumbling for the lights, checking the view behind her—and freezing. Only for a second, only long enough for her pulse to knock hard twice.

Sidney's Lexus is still here. Idling, lights on. Waiting. That's… unsettling. She glances back toward the door of the Rabbit Hole, back in the direction Robin had strolled away from her, and sees him standing there, still, eating up even more of his break time for her. He leans against the wall next to the door, the very picture of casual observance, cell phone in hand. But he's waiting, too. Waiting for her to go, waiting for Sidney to go.

Why is he still _here?_

But she doesn't want Henry to worry, especially since Sidney is, well, Sidney. It's not unlike him to hang around her, she tells herself. And there'd been a thin haze of tension between him and Robin tonight, a very subtle pissing match that might not be noticeable to anyone who didn't know both men had more-than-friendly interest in her. So. Maybe he's just… waiting to see her gone. Waiting until—

"Mom?" Henry asks, and she jumps slightly, shakes her head and looks at him.

"What, sweetie?"

"Are we going home?"

"Yes, of course." Regina shifts the car into reverse, and backs out of the space, trying not to let her sudden spike of nerves show in front of Henry. As she heads toward the entrance to the small lot, Sidney backs out of his space, pulling up behind her. She can still see the white of Robin's t-shirt glowing in the lamplight near the door.

She turns right out of the lot, expects Sidney to turn left, back the way they came. But he turns right, and she tightens her grip on the wheel. The distance between the bar and her house is a reasonably short walk, an even shorter drive, and Sidney's headlights are in her rear view around the first turn.

What is he _doing?_ God, please say he isn't going to follow her home, isn't going to try to help her bring her things in, isn't going to try to finagle an invite into her home this late in the evening. She'll have to put her foot down, then. A burger and ballgame are one thing, a late night house call something else entirely.

The alley behind their house is a left turn, and she takes it with her pulse thumping in her throat, exhaling heavily when Sidney continues straight on down the road. Not following her home, then. Or at least, not trying to _go home_ with her. Just a very unnecessary and creepy escort.

She pulls into their drive and parks the car, her fingers a little shaky as she fishes her cell phone from her purse, Henry unbuckling and already popping his door open. She has a message from Robin: _Is he following you?_

Regina taps out her reply with one hand, the other unclipping her seatbelt: _He tailed me until we turned down our block, but kept going._

She hasn't even had time to tuck the phone back into her purse, has only just stepped out of the car when it buzzes in her hand again: _Not okay._

 _I'll talk to him_ , she returns, resigning herself to yet another uncomfortable conversation with that utter mistake of a rebound.

"I've got the guitar!" Henry calls from the other side of the car, distracting her, and oh no, that won't do.

"Sweetheart, why don't you let me get the guitar and the amp," she suggests. "You can bring in your clothes."

"But—"

"No buts," she shuts him down. "They're heavy and expensive. Clothes for you. Electronics for me."

His _Fiiiiine_ is drawn out and a tad overdramatic, but he listens. Her phone buzzes as she's tucking it away again, but she tells herself she'll check it in a minute, just as soon as they're in the house.

She hauls the amp up the steps first, unlocks the back door and uses the amp to prop it open before jogging the downstairs hall, flipping on lights as she goes, and disarming the alarm with a quick _0815_. She sheds her purse by the door, then heads back outside for the guitar, laughing when she sees Henry trying to juggle what must be five shopping bags at once.

"How much did you guys get?" she asks with a shake of her head, her glance sweeping up and down the alleyway, senses still a little on edge.

"A lot," is all Henry has in answer, and then he's frowning. "Some of it's Robin's and some is mine, but I don't know which bags are which."

"Bring them all in; he can pick his up tomorrow," Regina tells him, and then she urges him to be careful on the steps before she reaches back into the car for Robin's new guitar.

Ten minutes later, they have everything inside, and Henry is brushing his teeth as Regina changes into yoga pants and a sports bra, a thin long sleeve over top for now (it's late for Henry, but less so for her, and she had fries tonight, so she should work them off for a little bit, clear her head before bed). She'd promised Henry he could show her his new guitar lick _after_ he got himself ready for sleep.

And then she remembers that Robin had texted again, and she hasn't answered. She can just picture him pacing and fretting behind the bar, so she trots down the stairs, nips her phone from her purse, and settles into one of the chairs in the living room to wait for her son.

 _So you're home safe then?_ sits on her lock screen, followed by _I'm choosing to believe you're carting in the mountains of crap we bought today and not otherwise incapacitated…_ and then _But please text me when you can._

Regina bites her lip, feeling a stab of guilt for leaving him hanging when she knew he was worried, and quickly replies, _Yes, we were hauling in the entirety of the Gap Kids boys section, apparently. Should have checked my phone again before I changed._

 _No worries_ , he buzzes as Henry comes bounding down the stairs, pajama-clad and ready to rock. _As long as you're home safe._

 _We are_ , she assures him.

Henry stops at the sight of the phone in her hand, reminding, "Don't forget to text Robin."

"That's what I'm doing right now," she promises, giving her phone a little wiggle, and dropping her knees to make room when Henry unexpectedly tries to squeeze into the chair with her. "Are you going to play your guitar in my lap?" she teases.

"Nope, but we should send him a selfie," Henry insists. "So he can see we're home safe."

Regina chuckles, and indulges him, flicking on the forward-facing camera, and holding it up until they're both in the frame. Henry grins cheesily, and Regina turns her head, smacks a kiss on his cheek before he knows what's hit him and punches the shutter button. It's a little blurry, but it works. Regina sends it to Robin, and then sets her phone down, urging Henry off her lap and toward the very attractive blue electric guitar propped next to the sofa.

It takes them some fiddling to get the amp and guitar set up, but before too long, he's showing off a rather impressive rendition of the first few bars of "Satisfaction." It's a little clunky, a little slow, but it's recognizable, and has her beaming with pride.

**.::.**

Robin's lock screen is a photo of Roland and Tuck, the toddler half-strangling the dog in his attempt to hug him, spacey baby teeth bared in a laughing, dimpled grin. He'd taken it a few weekends back, and set it on his phone immediately. Couldn't resist.

And he won't change it, will not, but he's at a lull between drinks, standing at the bar and staring down at his phone, and his fingers itch to hit that "use as wallpaper" button. He's looked at this picture an embarrassing number of times since she sent it a half hour ago. Henry's wide smile, Regina's puckered-up profile. He should not, absolutely should not, set it on his phone. She's not his girlfriend, she is just a friend.

And they certainly don't trump Roland, no matter how strong his feelings for the both of them may be. But it's a photo of them, taken just for him, a reassurance, maybe a hello.

And there's always his home screen. Tucked away behind lock screen and password. A bit more private, less likely to be seen.

He tells himself he is utterly pathetic as his thumb lands on that button, another couple of strokes, and there they are, half-hidden by a grid of folders and apps.

Robin presses the lock button on his phone and tells himself he'll change the background by the weekend.

**.::.**

Running is peaceful. Rhythmic and mindless, especially when she chooses to do it as she had tonight, in relative silence, no thumping beat to keep her time. Just Regina and the belt, the steady thunk-thunk-thunk of her running shoes, the soft hum of the rolling surface beneath her feet, the whoosh of her breath.

There's a sort of zen place she can get to when she really hits her stride, muscles warm, lungs filling and emptying, skin flushed and blooming with sweat. There's a painting on the wall nearby, another that Daniel had liked, and she knows every line, every curve, every shade and tone. She stares at them while she runs, traces the familiar brush strokes and lets her mind drift.

Unpacks her troubles one by one, and runs them out. Stews on them, wears them beneath her treads, lets them go if she can.

Running is peaceful, it makes her feel lighter.

Makes her brain reorient itself into straight rows, organize itself into tomorrow's to-do's, this weekend's errands, next week's plans. And tonight, as she walks herself into the cool down, it has her thinking she should call Robin.

It's late, but the bar is still open for a few more hours, and it's a weeknight, so she imagines it's quieter now. And she feels bad.

She'd spent minutes thirty-five to forty-three of her run thinking about that moment in the back office tonight. About his fingers in her hair, his hand warm and steady on her back. The solid comfort of his chest, and the temptation of his lips. Of them managing to resist it, of what Robin had said, and more importantly what _she_ had.

 _Too late_.

Too late for her not to regret him, she'd said, and in retrospect it seems a bit unkind and untrue. She has regrets when it comes to Robin, oh yes, she does, but she doesn't regret _him_. Not really. She's grateful. Glad to know him. Glad to have someone in her life who will take Henry for the day and come home with shirts that have skateboarding tacos on them. Who will go out of his way to make sure she's safe and appreciated. He'd done a terrible job of dating her, but he's been a very good friend, and a solid hour of pounding the belt has her realizing that she doesn't want to leave things the way she did.

So she walks her muscles cool for five minutes exactly and then steps off the treadmill, pleased by that familiar feel of a body well-worked. It takes her half a second to adjust to the world being still beneath her feet, as usual, and then she pads her way into the kitchen, pours herself a tall glass of cool water and gulps her way into the living room.

Her phone is still on the little side table, so she scoops it up and unlocks it, taps out a quick text to him: _You busy?_

She's refilled her cup, set the dishwasher running, shut off the downstairs lights, reset the alarm and is climbing the stairs before he replies saying he can take a break if she needs something.

_Not a need. Just wanted to talk._

She tosses the phone onto her bed and peels out of her sweaty clothes, sighing at the pleasant coolness of air conditioning on her skin. She's going to talk to Robin, and then she's going to take a nice, hot shower before bed. When her phone buzzes, she's down to nothing but her skivvies, and she's two steps toward her closet and her robe before she realizes that he isn't texting, he's _calling_ , the phone buzzing and buzzing rhythmically.

Shit.

She turns tail, trots back to the bed, and answers, "Hello?"

"Hi," he says, his voice colored with concern, and no bar noise behind him. He must be outside, or in the office. "Everything alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine," she assures, realizing how her text might have sounded as she stretches out along the top of her covers – they're soft and inviting, cool, and she decides the robe can wait for a minute. "It's nothing like that, I just wanted to… say thank you, for taking Henry today."

"You've already said thank you," he points out, and she thinks she can hear the smile in his voice, can imagine the way his lips would curve to one side, the way his dimples would pop. Should not imagine those things, she corrects herself. Especially not while she's lying nearly naked on her back.

"I know, but that was before I saw the five bags of clothing," she teases him. "How did you manage all that without going over budget?"

"Believe it or not, I am accustomed to shopping on a budget. I know my way around a sale."

Regina chuckles, draws her knees up until she can plant her feet comfortably on the quilt, and lets her eyes drop shut as she talks to him. "I suppose. You lied, by the way."

"I did?"

"Mm. Henry said you're teaching him to play electric guitar, after all."

"Oh, that."

"Yes, that."

"I told him I'd teach him on _my_ guitar. At my place."

Her eyes creep back open as she snorts. "You think Henry will be satisfied with that?"

"I think he'll manage, yeah. And besides, it's not like he's not over at my place all the time. He can play whenever he wants." There's the briefest of pauses before he adds, "Within reason."

"He's not bothering you, is he?" she asks, staring up at the ceiling and letting her fingertips trace patterns along the planes of her belly. She should get dressed. She should not let herself get so comfortable; she'll never get up.

But then Robin is asking her, "When have I ever give the impression that your son is a bother?"

She thinks of Sidney, of his utter disinterest in genuinely investing in her son, and says, "Never. Which is probably why you're stuck with him."

"And gladly so."

"He adores you, I hope you know that. Even more after today – he could not stop talking about you. Showed me everything you bought, told me all about matching shoes, and your lunch" —he lets out what might be a nervous chuckle at that, and she grins, is tempted to tell him a little sesame chicken never hurt a child, but she likes the idea of him squirming, so she doesn't— "and then all about the guitar, and how you taught him to play. About how you let him help set up the tables at the bar, and pour his own Cokes, and how Neal showed him the right time to put cheese on burgers. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get him to sleep at all."

"Sorry about that," Robin tells her, but she can definitely hear the smile. She knows he's not sorry, not even a little bit. And good, he shouldn't be.

"Don't be," she tells him. "He had a great day. He doesn't get a lot of guy time; it was very special for him. I'm glad he's excited."

The air conditioning has gone from cool to chilly as her sweat evaporates, and it has goosebumps on her skin, has her nipples hardened to stiff points. But her palms are still warm, so she lets one skim up to rest over a bare breast, warming it as he says, "Me, too. And I meant what I said earlier – you're brilliant. But just because you _can_ do everything yourself, doesn't mean you have to. And I hope I didn't… overstep… with what I said to him. You want someone in his life, but I know he's not my son, and I don't want you to feel like—"

"Robin," she interrupts. "I liked what you said. It meant a lot, both what you said and that you wanted to say it to him. I know you're not his dad, and that you're not trying to be, and so does he. But he was so young when I was with Graham… And now he's getting older, and I think he's… he hasn't really had anyone to look up to that way." She's not quite sure how to say what she's feeling, not quite sure she even _knows_ what she's feeling, but she lets her words go sardonic as she adds, "And if he's going to have someone in his life showing him what it means to be man, I'd rather it be you than Sidney, that's for sure."

Robin's laugh in reply is short and dry. "No offense, but that man is a wankstick."

The insult has her barking a laugh, rolling slightly onto her side and covering her mouth to muffle it down into a snicker. Henry's sound asleep down the hall, she knows she is, but the last thing she needs is for him to come investigating and find her naked on the telephone.

"He is," Robin insists. "And a creepy bastard on top of it – I can't believe he followed you home. If I'd known he was going to do that, I'd have gone with you."

"You wouldn't have had time," she sighs, still settling down from her laughter, face split in a grin. "The walk back would have taken your whole break, and driving you back would have ruined the point." And on the topic of breaks, he must be on one now, and she's let them chit-chat idly for most of it without getting to the reason she called in the first place. "Speaking of breaks… You probably need to get back to work?"

"Soon," he agrees. "But not quite yet. Unless you're trying to get rid of me, then yes, right now, I hear Ruby calling…"

Regina chuckles softly, her hand skimming down to toy nervously with the ridiculous little bow on the top hem of her underwear (why they put those on grown women's panties, she'll never understand). And then she steels herself and tells him, "No, I'm not, but I wanted to… tell you that I didn't mean what I said, earlier." There we go. Easy as pie. Rip the band-aid off. "I don't regret you, I just wish I'd known the truth sooner, so I could have…" She shakes her head even though he can't see her, sighs and finishes, "put you into some kind of box in my mind. _Do Not Date_. We could have just been friends, and nothing more." Her palm settles flat and warm on her belly, presses there as she whispers, "I didn't know that I wasn't supposed to fall for you."

"I'm sorry," he tells her, his voice soft and penitent, warm in a way that is comforting. Regina closes her eyes again to absorb it. "For what it's worth, I regret that – not telling you. I should have trusted you, I should have known you wouldn't risk me losing Roland. But I wanted to be with you." Something in the middle of her heart cracks, tears rising thick in her throat, but she swallows them down, rubs her palm up and down the center of her belly to self-soothe, as he finishes, "I was selfish, and I'm sorry."

"Me too," she whispers, clearing her throat a little to tell him, "But I'm glad I know you, and I'm glad you're in our lives. I don't regret that."

"Good. I meant what I said – I don't want to be a regret. I want to do right by you, even if I can't be with you."

Her lips curve at that, eyes blinking back open again.

"You are," she assures. "What you did today, for Henry, for me, that means a lot. I don't think I realized how much until you did it. But it did. And I know I keep saying thank you, but—"

"Do we need to put a moratorium on thank-yous as well as apologies?" he teases, their moment of gravity popped and fizzling out. And good, because she doesn't want to go to bed sad.

So she tells him,"No. I'll behave," and then exhales heavily. "And we should go. I need to shower before bed anyway, and I'm taking you away from your work."

"I suppose." His voice is close and quiet. Private. She likes it this way – shouldn't let herself enjoy the timbre of it just in her ear like this, not with her skin all goosepimply and bare, not with that hand still tracing her belly. She forces herself to slide her fingers to the quilt and grip there as he says, "Drinks to pour, and all that."

"Mm."

"I'll text before I come by your office tomorrow," he tells her, and for a second she can't remember what he's talking about, her brain taking a moment to catch up. Right. Her office. The fuse. Her car.

"Sounds good. And you'll let me know what I owe you, for today and the fuse."

"Sure," he says, in a way that is not at all convincing.

"Robin…"

"Five hundred for the clothes," he tells her. "The fuse is on me."

"No, it's not."

"Goodnight, Regina."

"You're an idiot."

He laughs a little at that, and says, "Yeah, well. I'm the idiot you've chosen to be a role model to your son. So. Look at your choices."

"Touché," she drawls. And then, "Get back to work."

He "yes ma'am"s her as a goodbye, and then they hang up, Regina letting the phone drop to the mattress beside her as she steels herself to get up out of this bed again.

It takes some mental effort, but she manages, shrugging on her robe, finally, and gathering a pair of soft, cotton pajamas to take across the hall with her. She stands under the warm spray until the sweat rinses away, and with it the lingering dregs of stress, the thin veneer of melancholy from her conversation with Robin. Lets her lavender soap chase it all down the drain and out of her sight.

Then she stays there until the water starts to cool, before she cranks the tap off and readies herself for bed.


	28. Chapter 28

He ought to have been earlier.

That's what he's kicking himself over when he rides the elevator to Regina's office at half two on Thursday afternoon. He ought to have been earlier – what if she'd wanted to go out for lunch or something. Granted, she had his car, it's not as though she was without wheels. But still, he ought to have been earlier.

He'd slept in to his usual eleven-ish, and then showered and tucked into a bowl of cereal before he called Neal. Neal had offered last night to give him a lift to the auto shop in the morning, but the phone had rung and rung and rung until the line had finally come to life with a fumbling clatter and a slurred, sleepy "'Lo?"

So to say they'd gotten rather a later start than they'd meant was an understatement.

But he's here now, has given Neal a grateful wave and a promise that he owes him before sending him packing, and is listening to the little _ding_ of the elevator as it hits her floor.

That young blonde is at the desk again, inviting him back with an, "Oh, you're a friend of Regina's aren't you?" and a "Let me just let her know you're here."

Regina is on the phone when he gets to her office, looking annoyed and a bit frazzled. She covers the receiver with her hand and mutters, "I'm sorry; I had to take this."

But Robin waves her off, assuring her, "It's no bother," and then asking, "Keys?"

She points to her purse, resting on the chair just beside him, and says to the person on the other end of the line, "Yes, I understand that, but the campaign was scheduled to run— Mmhmm…. Yes, of course."

By then he's found her key ring, lifting it with a little jingle and heading back the way he came. She's busy and this isn't a social call anyway.

He gives the girl at the desk—Ashton, he thinks her name was? No – Ashley, it had been Ashley—a wave and a "Be back shortly," and then he punches the elevator button and waits.

The doors open a moment later to that tosser who'd followed her home last night, an overly full takeout bag in one of his hands and his cell phone in the other. Robin's jaw clenches reflexively and he reminds himself that decking this guy in Regina's office building wouldn't be the wisest plan, and anyway, Regina isn't his to deck people over in the first place.

Sidney straightens just a little as they lock eyes (Robin is fairly certain he does, too), and then he's striding out of the elevator, the takeout bag in his right hand bouncing off Robin's knee as he passes far closer than is necessary.

Robin blows out a breath, clenches his fist around Regina's keys, then steps into the empty elevator car and pushes the down button ferociously.

Tosser. Wanker. Bollicking wankstick, sodding, motherfucking piece of trash.

He'd rubbed Robin entirely the wrong way last night. Had spent the whole night giving Henry just enough attention to not seem like a complete arse, and Regina enough to choke on. And Robin's not jealous, not in the slightest, but he does carry a dark, possessive sort of ill will toward the man. The kind that wishes him a morning of shitty traffic, spilled hot coffee, elevator doors closing in front of his face, maybe a stray Lego underfoot or stubbed toe. And Regina far, far away from him.

He doesn't _trust_ him. Doesn't like him. Officially, and not just because he's had his lips on Regina. She'd been nervous last night, uncomfortable, hadn't wanted to show it with Henry there, but Robin had seen it. And anyone who makes her feel that way has Robin's hands clenching into restless fists.

If he was younger, more impulsive, less caring of Regina's concern for her cool and collected professional image, he might just haul off and give the fuckwit a good solid warning punch. A very clear "Back off."

But he won't. Not yet, anyway.

Today, he'll just track her car down in the structure, pop her trunk and slip a fuse into the empty spot there, give the ignition a few testing turns to make sure everything is in good working order, and then leave a packet of spare fuses in her glove box so she doesn't get stranded again.

When he returns to her several minutes later, there's an unopened plastic takeout carton on her desk, some sort of dark leafy salad.

It's out of his mouth before he can help it: "Special delivery?"

Regina lets out a heavy, irritated sigh and nods. "Yeah. I have a pretty full day; he thought he'd 'save me the trip.'"

"How kind of him," Robin mutters, tossing her keys back into her purse, minus his own set that he'd wound off the ring on his way up the lift. When he looks back up, Regina has her lips pressed into something that he thinks is meant to be a suppressed smirk. She doesn't say anything, though, so he tells her, "Your car's running again, and I left you a few extra fuses. Just in case."

That suppressed smirk warms into a proper smile, and she tells him, "Thank you. How much do I owe you?"

"Five hundred for the clothes," he echoes his quote from the night before, "I've got the rest."

"Robin…" she starts, warningly, but he holds up a hand, shakes his head.

"I will never tell you, so don't bother. I can match your bullheadedness, I'm sure of it."

He tucks his hands into his pockets as she rolls her eyes heavenward, sighing and leaning back in her chair. She looks annoyed, but also a bit amused, so he isn't overly worried. She also looks bloody gorgeous, in a tight pencil skirt the color of charcoal, and a ruby sleeveless blouse, those tempting lips painted to match. He has a brief and very inappropriate fantasy about kissing those soft lips, and untucking that silky top, rucking the skirt up to her hips and fucking her right there on the desk.

But then she's talking again, and he snaps himself out of it, focuses on the things she's saying and not the mouth she's saying them with.

"I wanted to ask you," she begins, that annoyed look sliding toward something slightly accusatory. "Henry said something to me this morning about your guitar. He said he thought the blue was really cool, and that he'd 'worn you down.'" She pauses for effect before asking, "Did you let him talk you into a guitar that wasn't what you wanted?"

 _Caught_ , Robin thinks. But it's not a big deal, not really, so he shrugs and dismisses, "Nah, the blue's fine."

"But was it what _you_ wanted?" she repeats, with emphasis, her eyes narrowing slightly.

His shoulder lifts and falls again, as he admits, "It wouldn't have been my first choice, but—"

"Robin," she interrupts to scold him.

"They all sound the same," Robin reasons, because they do, and it's what he'd told himself yesterday as he'd accepted that the blue guitar was the one that would be going home with him. "And he has a hell of a stubborn streak – can't imagine where he got that from."

He grins, obviously teasing, and she gives him a look before she goes all stern again and accuses, "You're spoiling him."

Robin sighs, leans against the glass around her door and argues, "Regina, I wanted a Les Paul, and I got one. It's a nice color. Maybe a bit blue, but—"

"This is your _job_ ," she interrupts again. "This is your craft, you should have the instrument _you_ want, not the one a ten-year-old wants you to have."

"Nearly eleven, now," he points out, even though that's not the point.

Sure enough, she gives him a half-hearted roll of the eyes and a terse, "Irrelevant."

"What do you want me to do?," he asks her. "Return it? What would I tell him?"

He'd be gutted and they both know it. If Robin knows it, surely she does too.

"No, I don't want you to return it," Regina says, and then she's sitting a little straighter, shaking her hair back out and declaring, "I want you to give it to Henry." Well, that's… unexpected. "I had something else in mind for his birthday, but he couldn't stop talking about how you said he could play it for fifteen minutes at the end of his lessons, and he spent half an hour last night practicing his lick, and twenty minutes this morning…" She's smiling now, and Robin thinks choosing the less-than-dream guitar was worth it just for the look on her face and Henry's fervor. "I think he'll lose his mind if he gets an electric guitar for his birthday. So." She sits up a little more and gestures for him to hand over her purse as she informs him, "I want you to go back to the store and get the color that _you_ wanted, and I will reimburse you for the blue guitar and whatever else he needs to play it."

"He doesn't need a Les Paul Standard for a beginner electric," Robin tells her, leaving that pocketbook benignly on the chair. "You could get something cheaper. And it's fine, really—"

"We don't do cheaper in the Mills household, we do the best," she tells him primly, in a way that he thinks is probably intentionally reminiscent of her mother. "Or at least, reasonably so. And besides, _you_ let him talk you into a blue Les Paul. So that's what he's getting."

She wiggles her fingers for the bag again; Robin just crosses his arms over his chest, tilting his head a bit.

"So you're stealing my guitar, then; is that what I'm to understand?"

The sigh she lets out is exasperated and charming, and he rather likes the fire in her when she snips, "I'm saving you from yourself, you weak-willed idiot."

That has him laughing, lifting the purse, finally, and looping it over his wrist rather than handing it to her. He may wear her down on the guitar, but it will bloody well come with conditions, and she won't be getting her hands on her checkbook until she agrees to them.

"You know he's going to think I should have gotten another blue one," Robin points out. "So we could match."

"Robin, if you want to give in on matching Nikes, that's fine," she softens a little, adding, "Honestly, that's sweet," before switching to strict-mom-mode for, "But I will not let you choose your professional tools based on the whims of my son. How long did you have to save for that guitar?"

 _Months_ , he thinks. And also, not at all.

He shrugs again, explains, "That friend I lent all our money to last year paid me back. I'm a bit flush just now; I took advantage."

But Regina knows him, or maybe he'd said something over the last few weeks, something he'd forgotten, because she doesn't buy it for a second. One of her brows lifts up into a haughty arch, her voice sly as she drawls, "So you had never considered getting the electric before that, hadn't put a single penny aside?" The other pops up to join it for a firm, "And don't you dare lie to me."

"Yes ma'am," he assures, feigning chastisement. "And alright, I've been saving, but—"

"Then you should get what _you've_ been saving for," she steamrolls, eyes flashing. She really is in a snit over the color of this guitar. "Not what Henry wants. If Henry wants blue, he can get blue."

"Why are you so bent out of shape about this?" he wonders.

Lips purse for a moment, her glance dropping, tone smoothing as she confesses, "Because I asked you. I asked you to be in his life, to be someone he looked up to – and he took advantage."

"He didn't," Robin assures, because he hadn't, it wasn't like that. Not in the slightest.

"Robin," she says softly, meeting his gaze again. "He did. You're a pushover. He knew he could wear you down, and he did."

"I'm not a pushover," Robin grumbles, thumbing the strap of her purse with a look that feels more sulky than the scowl he was aiming for.

"What color is your guitar?" she asks, pointedly. And okay, fair play to her. Fine.

"I'll agree to this on one condition," he relents, holding her purse out, but not letting go of it, even when she reaches to grasp the strap herself.

"What's that?"

"It's from both of us."

It takes another minute of bickering, but he doesn't relinquish her bag until she agrees.

**.::.**

He's waiting for the lift when the bloody gobshite shows up again. Like a bad fucking rash you just can't get rid of.

And just when Robin had finally quelled the urge to plant a fist in his face, too.

They stand there in tense silence for a moment, before Robin loses the battle to willpower and mutters a quiet, "Off to get her a coffee, too?"

He keeps his gaze straight ahead, squints casually at the slowly climbing number on the display above the lift doors, but he can see Sidney in his periphery, the way he's holding himself stiff.

"If I was going to get her coffee, I'd make her one myself," he returns coolly. "She loves my coffee."

"I just bet," Robin mutters with a sour turn of his stomach, not sure if he's grateful or dreadful when the lift doors open to an empty car. Just the two of them then.

Sidney makes a point to step on first, rushing just a little bit, and Robin fights the urge to roll his eyes at the ridiculous pettiness of it. Grow some pride, man. He strolls on after him and faces front, crosses his arms to resist the rising urge to behave like a baboon.

As soon as the doors close, Sidney asks him, "Why you?"

"'Why me' what?"

"You're here for her car. I offered to take care of it for her, so why did she make you go all the way out of your way—"

"She didn't make me do anything; I offered her my car for the day, so she could get to work," Robin explains, although he owes this git zero explanation for anything he or Regina does. "And I had some extra time, and she already owed me a check, so I told her I'd sort it."

Sidney scoffs. "You're going to make her pay you back for one measly little fuse?"

Robin fights the urge to sigh, and says, "No, I am not, you bollicking wanker. You asked me why she let me, so I am telling you. She doesn't like to be in someone's debt; she is already in mine, ever so briefly, so she doesn't mind adding a few more dollars onto the pile. And no, I am not making her pay for it—I have, in fact, told her not to—but I'm sure she will anyway. And I'll put the extra money back into the envelope she keeps for ordering out when Henry has a sitter, and she'll never be the wiser."

For a moment Sidney is quiet, chewing over all that, no doubt. When he does speak, his question grates on Robin: "Why does she owe you money?"

"You are an awfully nosy bastard, aren't you?" Robin asks, finally turning his head to look at the other man, noticing as he does that he's looking ever so slightly down at him and feeling a smug bit of satisfaction at the fact. "I took Henry with me when I ran some errands this week, bought him a few things to save her the trip."

"Using her son to get to her," Sidney scoffs. "Classy."

The implication flashes temper through him, and Robin presses his fingers hard into his bicep to keep from shoving them hard into Sidney's face.

"I'm not using her son for anything," he grits. "I actually like her son."

"Why?"

"Jesus suffering fuck," Robin mutters, shaking his head before he says, "Because he's a smart kid with a good sense of humor, who loves his mum and likes my kid. I'm not using Henry to get to Regina – I don't need Henry to get to Regina, she's my bloody neighbor, and my bloody friend; if I want to talk to her, all I have to do is walk down the street and knock on her bloody door."

Sidney's voice is cool and accusatory when he levels Robin with, "What do you want from her?"

"Nothing," Robin tells him resolutely, as the doors start to open on the ground floor. As a parting shot he adds, "That's why _I'm_ here, and you're bringing her lunches like a pathetic errand boy."

And then he's the one rushing – stretching into long, but not terribly hurried, strides and leaving that festering bellend in the dust where he belongs.

**.::.**

The rest of the first week of August is oppressively hot. Temperatures rise up well into the nineties, and despite several brief thunderstorms, the humidity refuses to break. The air outside feels like soup on the worst of days, an oven on the best. Regina stays indoors, and so does Henry, for the most part, but by Sunday afternoon, she's going a little stir-crazy, and Henry has told her no less than three times that he's bored.

It's her fault, partly. She doesn't want him to spend the entire weekend glued to video games, so she'd cut him off halfway through the day yesterday, and has only let him play for one level today. He's a reader, but it seems today he's just not in the mood. Neither is he particularly in the mood to help her scrub the bathroom or the kitchen (no surprise there). The heat has made her snippy, a bit short-tempered, and she finds that _she_ is in no mood to listen to him complain.

So they venture out.

A little fresh (hot, so hot) air, and sunshine will probably do them both good – if it doesn't give them heatstroke. She slathers sunscreen on both of them, packs a cooler full of ice, and water, and Gatorade, a couple of sandwiches and some fruit, and they head to the park. It's not terribly crowded today – all the sane people are indoors letting their children indulge in too much screen time, no doubt – so she manages to score a spot under a tree for their blanket and cooler.

Of course, "not too crowded" also means "less free entertainment for Henry," so she bakes right along with him in the afternoon sun. They've brought a frisbee, and spend some time tossing it back and forth, Regina feeling a little bit guilty that she keeps throwing wide on purpose to make Henry run a few steps with each pass, but, well, exercise is good, right?

He's not dumb, though, her son, not in the slightest, so when he has to jog five feet to his left to even attempt to grab the frisbee (he misses and has to trudge another five away from her to snatch it off the ground), he returns with an accusatory glare.

"You're not this bad at frisbee," Henry calls to her, and Regina shrugs a little.

"Maybe I'm out of practice."

"Yeah, or you're cheating," he accuses, and then he whips that thing high and hard, and it sails so far over Regina's head there's not a chance in hell (or Baltimore, which feels roughly the same at the moment) that she can even leap and catch it. It's all she can do to spin around and watch it fly, and hope desperately it doesn't hit that Lexus parked on the street.

Just her luck, it doesn't. But it does nearly take out Robin as he walks into the park, looking up from talking to Roland only because Tuck gives a barking leap in an attempt to catch the disc as it descends. Regina winces, is about to shout his name herself when he sees the frisbee and lifts a hand to cover his face. It bounces off his forearm and lands a few feet away; Tuck races for it, and then tears off toward her and Henry.

The relief she feels at having someone else to chase that thing with Henry so she can sit and drink and cool off for a minute almost makes her feel guilty.

"You alright?" she calls toward Robin, Roland running after Tuck across the grass between them.

"Fine," he assures, jogging about three steps and then closing the distance between them at a slow amble as he taunts, "But your son is in the other direction."

"Who do you think threw it?" she asks, hands planted on her hips, and Robin laughs, shakes his head.

Then he looks past her to Henry and says, "Nice throw."

Henry looks up from scratching Tuck between the ears and says, "Mom kept making me run."

"Tattle tale," she accuses, and then off Robin's _In this bloody heat?_ , "We're out here to get some air and some exercise – and if he told me one more time how bored he was, I was going to… well, send him next door maybe, so he could pester someone else."

She smirks, and he laughs, and this is… nice. Good. Casual, and friendly, and for once it doesn't hurt. His arms in that tank top don't hurt either, but she probably shouldn't be thinking too much about those.

"I should start charging you," he teases, and she'd feel bad except she knows he wouldn't take her money for childcare anyway, just like she won't take his. So she shrugs, and notices the way his glance flicks down her to her collar. Or just below, rather. She shouldn't be surprised; he's not the only one in a tank top today. Probably shouldn't be flattered either, but she is.

"I'm going to go have some water," she declares, and his gaze snaps up from her cleavage like he hadn't realized he'd let it linger so long. Snaps right up to her waiting gaze, and then shifts away, and he clears his throat, and tells her he'll keep an eye on the boys for a while.

She nods, and thanks him, and asks Henry if he needs something to drink, too. He says he doesn't, so she retreats back to their shady little oasis. It's only slightly cooler there, her skin feeling only slightly less like it's being baked minute-by-minute (maybe they should have gone to the beach; she'd kill to slip into some cool water right now). The cooler feels like heaven, loaded up with ice packs and loose cubes and as tempting as it is to leave it open and enjoy the radiant coolness on her fingertips, she pulls out a water bottle, snaps the lid shut, twists off the cap and drinks deep.

**.::.**

Robin watches her go. Couldn't help it if he tried, not in those short shorts and that thin vest. She's dressed for the heat in a way he's not sure he's seen her before – roughly, as much skin exposed as is polite for the public. All leg, and denim, and that thin-strapped peach top. She's been sweating, despite her apparent cheating, and the back of her tank has a dark splotch on it. Her collarbone had been dewy, and he'd had the intense desire to run his tongue from her neck straight down between her tits.

Probably a good thing she walked away.

He should probably leave her to her own devices, should probably not follow and make small talk just to hear her voice and get another up-close look at those legs, and those shoulders, and… She drinks from her water bottle for a moment, and then caps it and lays back on the blanket, slips her feet out of her flip-flops and into the grass. Robin stares at her knees for a second, at her calves, at that right hand he can see stretched out to her side as she lies there, her fingers wiggling slightly.

He needs to focus on the boys.

Their sons, who are, to be fair, entirely wrapped up in a game of fetch with the dog. At just this moment, Henry is trying to teach Roland and all his three and a half years of coordination how to throw a proper frisbee.

Robin tries to put the boy's mother out of his mind, watches as Henry guides Roland's arm in the proper throwing arc. He wonders for a moment who taught him to throw – Regina, or someone else? Together, the boys manage to toss the disc about five feet ahead of them, so low that Tuck snatches it out of the air without much effort.

"See!" Henry encourages, "You can still do it!"

Roland grins, and nods, his curls bouncing (they should probably see about getting those cut tomorrow), and then he spins to Robin and says, "Daddy, look! I did it!"

"That you did, my boy," Robin praises, crouching down and holding up a hand for a high five. "Why don't you try throwing one to me."

Roland trots off to wrestle the frisbee from Tuck, intent on doing just that.

**.::.**

She listens to them while she lies here, staring up at the tree. This one in particular has been here a long time, has a thick canopy of leaves that blocks most of the brighter light, the rest filtering down pleasantly, bits of blue peeking through here and there, green leaves almost translucent in the sunnier patches.

There's a little bit of a breeze, finally, and while she wouldn't say this weather is at all comfortable, she finds herself enjoying the moment. Stretched out like this, arms splayed to her side, toes in the warm grass, and that cold bottle of water (not so cold anymore, unfortunately), resting against the side of her neck.

She listens to the boys laughing, to Henry's shouts, and Roland's, to the dog barking. Robin calling after them from time to time. She listens, and she watches the trees, and she slow roasts in the warm afternoon air, and it all becomes sort of… lulling. She feels soporific, a bit floaty, a bit sweaty.

But content.

It's not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

She could fall asleep right here, take a nap. Robin is watching the boys, they'd be safe. She'd be safe. It's odd, she thinks, how safe she feels with him, even knowing what he did. But then she thinks it's not odd at all – he's more than the worst of his actions, more than his rock bottom. She knows who he is, deep down. A good man. A kind man. A boneheaded, stupid man. But a good one.

And a respectful one, which is more than she can say for some of the men in her life.

She sighs, and shifts a hand to her forehead, shutting her eyes and telling herself not to think of Sidney. Not to think of his "I was raised to believe you always see a woman home after dinner" as an (to her mind, flimsy) excuse for following her home when she'd casually inquired about his motives the next morning. Or of the air of surly displeasure that had hung around him after Robin had popped into the office. She's not going to think of those things, because it is her day off. Sidney's not here, she's not at work, she has the rest of the day to feel comfortable in her own skin. To wear shorts and an admittedly skimpy tank top and not have to worry about who's going to be looking at her and how. Not have to worry about someone telling her how good she looks in red for the hundredth time.

No, she's not going to think about any of that, not going to worry about any of it. She's just going to lie here and—

Roland's wailing interrupts her thoughts, and she bolts up straight, eyes scanning the playground quickly until she spots him.

Robin is already sprinting over from the grass where they'd been tossing the frisbee not too long ago, Henry a few paces behind him.

Roland is under the monkey bars, on his knees in the gravel, crying. Her stomach pitches, swoops low, and she watches attentively as gravel sprays around Robin's feet when he skids to a stop, blocking her view of Roland. Henry catches up and stands over them, hovering; she can't hear what they're saying. She can hear Roland crying, but it's not the fierce wails of a broken limb or other serious injury, so she thinks the first cry was maybe more surprise than anything else. Hopes, anyway.

Her on-alert mom senses start to dull, and she becomes suddenly aware for the first time that not a single one of them is wearing a shirt. Robin has stripped off his tank top, it's drooping out of his back pocket, the red of Roland's top wedged in beside it, and Henry's t-shirt is tucked into the back of his pants much the same way. She spares a vague thought for sunscreen, and how Henry has now been running around largely unprotected, but then Robin is hoisting Roland up and standing, and he's barechested and sweat-sheened and her brain shorts out a little bit.

They start walking back over, not particularly hurried, Robin brushing gravel from Roland's knee. She can see from here that it's scraped, can see a hint of red, can see the way he's still crying and crying.

She puts nicely defined muscles out of her mind, and sunscreen, too, for the moment, and reaches for the mini first-aid kit she makes a habit of bringing every time they come to the park. Because you just never know with boys, do you?

By the time they reach the blanket, she's already pulled out Band-Aids and ointment, an alcohol wipe and gauze.

"Henry said you have Band-Aids," Robin tells her, looking guilty as he runs a hand over Roland's back and presses a kiss into his curls. He wasn't looking. She doesn't even need to hear it to know; he wasn't watching and his baby got hurt, and her heart clenches in sympathy.

Regina nods and holds her arms out, gives Robin a sad little smile and then looks to Roland (his cheeks are flushed red from heat and tears, and that scrape is definitely bleeding down his knee).

"Come here, baby," she coos, "We'll get you all patched up."

Robin passes him off, and she settles him on her lap (he presses into her for comfort immediately, and he's warm, sun-baked just like she is; she feels the swath of skin he's leaning against start to sweat immediately), then reaches for her supplies.

"I scraped it," Roland sobs, and she keeps her voice soft and calm, keeps it soothing while Robin watches anxiously, barely glancing at the blue Gatorade Henry hands him before he twists the top off and sips.

"I see that," she says, and then he's holding out skinned palms to her, too. They're not bleeding overly much, but she can see that they're hurting him. "Oh, baby," she sighs. "We'll take care of those, too. Maybe Daddy can give you some ice to hold on to while I fix your knee up, hmm?"

Roland warbles a wet little, "Yeah," and Robin is already fishing out a few melty cubes, shifting to sit right next to Regina's crossed knees and reaching for Roland's hands as she reaches for some clean gauze. He eases the ice over the scrapes with a gentleness she can see, and Roland squirms and cries a little harder (it doesn't help when Regina uses said gauze to wipe gently at the blood oozing down his soft little knee – he still has baby skin, so soft, it aches her to see it scraped and bleeding). He settles after a moment, though, his cries tapering off as he watches his father trace cool, drippy little trails over his wounds.

"Does that feel better, my boy?" Robin asks softly, and Roland nods and sniffles.

It makes her feel bad about what's coming next, but she has no real choice here. She has no illusions about the cleanliness of playground gravel, and she won't have him with an infected cut on her watch. So she dabs gently at the wound, determines it more of a seeper than a bleeder. Something a bandage can easily staunch. Time to clean it up and patch it up, kiss it better and call it a day.

She reaches for an alcohol wipe, ripping open the little packet carefully. Robin sees it, and warns, "This is going to hurt a bit, alright, Roland, but it'll feel better right after, Daddy promises. Okay?" Roland whines and squirms, shakes his head, and Robin tries again, "Come on now, my boy. Let's be tough men." He makes a face, an exaggeratedly masculine, fierce face, and she feels Roland straighten a bit on her lap. "That's it, son."

She doesn't love it – the forced masculinity (he's three, let him cry if it hurts) – but when she peers around at his face and finds it a pint-sized miniature of his father's, if a bit tear-stained and wobbly-chinned, her heart melts.

"Alright, baby, it's just a little sting, and then all better," she promises, and she wipes gently but quickly, unsurprised when it kicks up another round of loud tears from Roland and a short chorus of _Ouch ouch ouch!_ So she rocks and she hums, and she "I know, I know, baby..."s.

Henry has been sitting near the cooler, pouring water into his cupped palm and letting Tuck lap it up eagerly, but he abandons the dog now and leans forward to blow on Roland's knee.

Regina smiles at him – that's usually her move. A swipe of alcohol, a little blow, a Band-Aid, and a kiss have seen him through many a cut and scrape over the years.

"It hurts less if you blow," he tells her authoritatively, and then looks to Roland. "Better, right?"

Roland shakes his head, clearly not impressed, and Henry scowls.

"He doesn't have the Band-Aid or the kiss yet," she reminds, reaching for a little tube of Neosporin, and squeezing a bead onto her thumb. "Almost done, baby," she assures, swiping the ointment over the abraded skin, and then covering it with a Band-Aid that is a little too big (all the others seemed a little too small). Then she holds his leg up toward Robin and orders, "A kiss to start the healing."

Robin smiles and leans in, pressing an oh-so-gentle kiss to Roland's bandaged knee.

"Now does it feel better?" Henry asks Roland insistently, and this time the boy nods, his breath hitching slightly.

"There," Regina soothes, dropping a kiss into Roland's curls and letting him move over into Robin's lap for a good cuddle. He settles into the curve of one strong arm (Robin reaches for his Gatorade again with the other, uncaps it one-handed, and offers it to Roland), and Regina finds herself staring at the scar that runs up his bicep. It looks deep, painful. She wonders how many stitches it had taken to close, wonders how it had opened in the first place. She'll ask him someday.

Not today, not right now while he's soothing Roland, but someday. There's a moment, then – a yearning, pressing moment where she wants to know his stories, wants to know about all of his scars, wants to tell him about hers. She doesn't have many – a thin one on her index finger from when Henry was two, a few chicken pox scars, one on her hip, one on her shoulder, one near a sensitive spot at the base of her spine that Daniel had liked to brush kisses over. He'd said it was "cute."

She has stretch marks, if those count, from carrying Henry. Not many, just a few. She'd moisturized obsessively when she was pregnant, slathered herself in belly balm, and chugged water like it was her job because she'd heard good hydration was key to supple, stretchable skin. But she still ended up with a few thin, stubborn faults that creep up below her navel.

There's another scar in her hair, hidden away, from that time she'd whacked her head when she was young. Nothing like Robin's, though. Nothing deep, nothing obvious. Not on her skin anyway. All of Regina's more glaring scars are invisible, deep marks left under her skin by grief, and criticism, and self-loathing. Neuroses.

She wonders, sometimes, how many he's already learned. How much he understands, just from the little she's told him, or from what he's seen these last few months. But no, that's not really true, is it? She's told him a lot, more than anyone in a long time. She's already shown her scars, she thinks, and so maybe he owes her this one. To even the score. She knows so much of who he is, but she doesn't know much of anything about before. Before he moved here, before they met. What was he like, then? With Marian, and before…

She watches him carefully as he gives Roland a gentle scolding, his voice firm but not unkind as he urges, "You mustn't go on the monkey bars alone, my boy. You could get hurt."

"Yeah, I did," Roland sulks, his bottom lip jutting out pitifully.

"I see that. But you could have gotten hurt even worse," Robin warns "And besides, they'd be so hot today, your paws would get scorched."

Robin lifts one skinned palm up to his lips and brushes a kiss there, and Regina melts. She's glad for Roland's sake that he's such a good father, but it does rather unfortunate things to the pit of her stomach, considering that he can never be more than a good friend to her. A good friend, and a good man for Henry – she can be grateful for those fatherly instincts for that, too, she supposes.

And then she slides her gaze over to her own son (presently munching on one of the peanut butter and jam sandwiches she'd packed), and notices the pinkish tinge of his shoulders. It's a shame those fatherly instincts don't extend to things like sunscreen, she thinks with a little sigh. She'll have to put some aloe on him when they get home.

She reaches into the cooler for a Ziploc-sealed sandwich of her own, tearing it in half and offering the rest to Roland when he gives her a pitiful, "I'm hungry, too" as he watches her take the first bite. Robin mouths a "thank you" over Roland's head, and continues to rub his palm over his son's back, swaying to and fro slightly as they sit.

Roland takes a bite and chews, adjusts himself against Robin's torso and stares out at the grass nearby, the rocking lulling him into that far-off stare of the soon-to-fade toddler.

She smirks at Robin, and whispers, "I think someone's tired."

"Am not," Roland protests, and Regina has to fight not to snort through her smirk. Not as subtle as she'd meant to be, apparently.

Robin grins, and looks down at Roland, combs his fingers through his curls and asks, "What if she meant me? I'm awfully sleepy."

"You are?" Henry asks, wrinkling his nose. He's back to watering the dog (Regina reminds herself to break out the hand sanitizer before they leave).

"Oh yes," Robin insists with a big, creaky yawn; Regina can't tell if he's faking. "I'm an old man, now. I need my rest. So very, very tired." Tuck has finally drunk his fill, apparently, because he drops his head onto his paws and looks over at them, prompting Robin to add, "And look, Tuck's tired too. Maybe we should all just curl up here under the tree, and sleep."

"In the park?" Roland asks, incredulous, pulling back and looking up at his father with an adorably wrinkled nose.

"It'd be like camping!" Henry interjects, sounding excited at the prospect, and Regina imagines the little wheels in his head spinning madly. She fully expects to be asked about a campout in the park sometime in the next week.

"Maybe," Roland agrees sulkily. Someone could definitely use a nap.

"Mm, definitely," Robin agrees, still rocking, rocking, and Regina watches with a smile as Roland's long lashes begin to droop. And then suddenly Robin stiffens, his eyes trained on something in the distance, and mutters, "Shit."

Regina scolds a mild, "Language," and then follows his gaze, her stomach swooping as she does. He's looking at a woman. A spritely blonde, in Daisy Dukes and a halter top, waving at Robin with an arm that's wrapped in a green cast.

Regina glances back to Robin and watches him shift a little, lifting a hand to wave back at the woman, and then looking at her with a slightly panicked, "I lost track of time. Do you think – could you take Roland for a little while? I've got company for a bit, and I don't want to keep him up if he's about to crash."

He adds, "Please," as Regina blinks. Is he… Did he just… Ask her to watch his son while he's with…? But he's looking at her so imploringly, and Roland is starting to whine as Robin shifts again, easing him from his comfy perch. It's second nature for her to reach for Roland, to nod dumbly, to say, "Sure, I guess that's fine."

After all, isn't this what they _do_ for each other?

Regina pulls his son into her lap, cuddling him close almost possessively as Robin bends to press a kiss to his curls. "Thank you," he tells Regina sincerely, the mystery blonde ambling closer and closer. And then he tells Roland, "You be good for Regina; Daddy will come get you in a little while when he's done with his friend, alright?"

Roland nods; Regina's mind echoes with _done with his friend_ and she burns. She's pretty, this woman. Pretty and blonde and perky. And Regina has been saying they need to move on, it's perfectly _logical_ that he would meet some pretty blonde thing in his line of work and spend an afternoon with her. To be honest, she should have expected this – pretty blondes are her follow-up act, it seems.

Robin is already three feet away, heading off his guest when Regina spies the red cotton still spilling from his pocket. Dammit.

She calls after him, "Robin!" and when he turns back, "Roland's shirt."

He lets out an "Oh!" of surprise, then tugs it and his tank top from his pocket, shrugging into his own top before he balls Roland's up and tosses it back in her direction. It unfurls midair and doesn't quite make it back to their little camp, but Tuck is more than happy to hop up and snatch it from the grass, carrying it back to a beckoning Henry.

It occurs to Regina then that he's left her with both his son _and_ his dog. Lovely.

He calls another thank you before he turns away again, falling into step with the blonde who has made her way over to him by now. Regina watches Robin smile apologetically, his head turned in profile, and then she finally looks away.

Her stomach feels sour, her heart pounding, her skin hot where Roland's little fingers are scratching lazily back and forth against her forearm. She hasn't felt this kind of burning envy in a long time; was this how Robin had felt when he knew she was with Sidney?

Perhaps, this is karma, she thinks. Or maybe friendship? Is this what being friends with him is supposed to feel like?

Either way, she finds she doesn't like it.

**.::.**

He leaves Roland with Regina in the park, and heads back toward his place with Tink. Leaves all that tempting bare skin, and the practiced ease of her fixing Roland's boo-boos, leaves her easy smile, and those eyes he could sink into and—

"I'm sorry, what?" he asks, realizing that Tink has said something and he's missed it entirely, too busy mooning over the woman he can't have.

She smirks, and repeats "I hope I wasn't interrupting anything. I got to your place, and your roommate said you'd taken your son to the park, and I should, and I quote, 'go drag you home before you let both the kid and the dog get heatstroke.'"

"Tosser," Robin mutters, although they hadn't exactly picked the brightest time to be out in the baking midday sun. Or rather, they _had_ picked the brightest time, and it was probably poor planning. And on top of that he'd let Roland get hurt – they probably should have just stayed home. But he smiles, and says, "You weren't interrupting. We just went so he and the dog could run off some energy. Ran into the neighbor there."

"So she's your neighbor," Tink says, her tone a combination of knowing and doubtful, and God damn Ruby Lucas and her big mouth.

"Christ, has Ruby told everyone on the planet that I fancy the neighbor?" he sighs, exasperated.

She laughs, a tinkling, amused sort of thing, and giggles, "No, she hasn't. I saw it with my own two eyes. You looked very comfortable there, the four of you."

Shit.

Robin clears his throat slightly, feels heat creeping up the back of his neck and admits, "We're comfortable. But not… together. Just friends."

Tink lets out another little chuckle, and shakes her head.

"We watch each other's kids sometimes – usually me minding her son for a bit, while she's running errands or some such. I have my son on the weekends, so I don't tend to give up my time with him."

He realizes what he's said as her face falls, her brows drawing together in confused concern, "Robin, we could do this another time if it's easier for you – I wouldn't want to take time away from your son."

"It's alright," he assures. "He loves music, and I had a feeling you probably like kids?" He continues off her _I do_ , with, "So I thought he'd just hang around and pester us, maybe color a bit, play with the dog, or John could keep him occupied if he got too squirrely." They're turning onto his block as Robin says, "But he was getting tired, and he's got a nap in him, and I don't want to keep him from it. He's a whiny terror if he can't get a proper kip in the afternoon, and with someone new, and the music, and all that." Robin shrugs, and finishes, "He can sleep just as well at Regina's – probably better; it's quieter there, I'm sure."

"As long as it's not a problem," Tink frets, still frowning slightly, "But next time, make sure you tell me – I'll work around him; I'm flexible."

Robin smiles gratefully, and says, "Thank you. I'm just really grateful for the gig. I don't get many opportunities to play these last few… months."

Tink nods, tucks her uninjured thumb into her pocket. "Ruby says you've been trying to get back into performing." She smiles that friendly smile at him again, and teases, "She said you sang at the bar earlier this summer and knocked the socks off all the pretty girls."

Robin snorts. "Ruby would say that." They've turned onto his street now, but they've a bit of road left still to travel before they reach his step, so Robin makes small talk. "I didn't think to ask when she introduced us – how do you two know each other?"

Tink's eyes go bright, her smile impish, and she cocks her head a little and says as if he should have known, "Biblically."

Robin stops. It's embarrassing as hell, but he actually stops dead in his tracks to absorb that bit of information. Nelly Tinkerman and Ruby… huh.

"I'm her ex."

"Oh," he says, like an idiot, clearing his throat and starting to walk again. "She, uh, she didn't mention that when we talked about me working with you."

"That I was her ex, or that some of her exes were women?" Tink asks, curious and bold, still looking very much amused. He can feel the flush under his skin, and knows this time the heat is not to blame.

"Both," Robin admits with a grimace. "I'm sorry, I'm being a right arse about this, aren't I?"

"Well, you're not looking at me like I'm about to steal your girl or corrupt your child, so you're doing better than some people." Her unbroken hand tucks into a frayed pocket as she continues, "I didn't realize it was going to be such a surprise, or I might have broken it to you more gently."

Robin shrugs, tells her, "I don't think that's necessary. Just had to wrap my head around it for a moment is all. I've known Ruby for almost six months now—" Jesus, was it really that long? "—and I never knew."

"Well, it's not as though we wear signs," Tink taunts good-naturedly, and Christ, he is well and truly making a complete knob of himself.

"Of course not," he chuckles. "I'm sorry. Can we change the subject to something that makes me look like less of a plonker?"

Tink gives another little laugh, and nods, tells him, "Sure," and then "I know I sent you those songs of mine to learn, but I was also thinking maybe we could work on a few covers? Or something of yours? Seems a shame to waste what I hear is a lovely voice on just back-up."

Robin smiles, and nods, grateful for the shift in topic, and says, "Yeah, I'd like that. But everything of mine is old. I haven't written much lately."

They're turning up his walk as she questions, "Seriously? You're not-dating the neighbor and you haven't written anything? Seems like that would be prime inspiration for all sorts of angsty love songs."

Robin chuckles, admitting, "I tried, before my last gig. Nothing was coming."

"So you just gave up?" she asks, like the idea is baffling.

"I decided to work on things I could actually perform, so I wouldn't choke entirely," he explains, thinking back to the frustrated nerves of the whole process of preparing for that last gig. At least with Tink, there will be less pressure. Sure, he has some songs to learn, but he's a quick study, and he's already had them for a few days now, and he won't be the night's entertainment. Just the back up. Much less scary.

At least until the moment she says, "Well now I'm determined. We're going to write that woman a song."

His stomach drops, and he thinks _Bollocks_ , following after Tink as she bounds up his front steps.

John's on the couch with the TV on, but he looks up as they come in, cranes his head a bit to see them. Robin gives him a nod, and then John is frowning, and asking, "Where's Roland?"

"I left him with Regina."

John's eye roll is hard enough that Robin thinks it could shake the ceiling.

**.::.**

Jealousy is an ugly emotion, one she doesn't like to feel. And certainly not when she has no right to it in the first place. But envy grows roots in her belly, spreads down and hooks into her, and has her feeling grouchy and blue for the rest of the afternoon. Oh sure, she tries to hide it. Scoops Roland up onto her hip not ten minutes after Robin leaves with the _friend_ he didn't even see fit to introduce her to, and forces a smile for Henry as they carry their things back home.

She puts a sleepy Roland down for a nap in the spare room upstairs, rubs cool aloe on his rosy shoulders until those long lashes droop and droop and droop shut. Then she drapes a light blanket over him so the air conditioning doesn't give him a chill, and stares at the angelic curve of his cheek, wondering what his father is doing right now. Who she is. Why he felt the need to rush off so quickly.

And then she tells herself to knock it off.

When she gets downstairs, she catches Henry sneaking pieces of deli turkey to Tuck in the kitchen, and the resulting scolding pulls her mind from Robin, at least for a little while. He's hungry – Henry, not the dog, the PB&J from the park hadn't been enough – so she makes them hearty sandwiches for lunch. Seven grain bread, and the last of that turkey, a slice of cheese on Henry's, and mustard and lettuce and tomato for them both. It's good, but she doesn't really have much of an appetite all of a sudden.

She blames the heat.

She does laundry. Cleans the kitchen, and the downstairs powder room, makes a grocery list, and takes Tuck out to lift a leg when he whines at the front door. She tries very hard not to look at Robin's house, and fails, but looking is useless, because there is nothing to see. The street is quiet, empty, a sweltering ghost town, and Robin's house is no different. Still, and quiet, but she knows he's in there, or at least she thinks he is. Maybe he's not, maybe they went out.

Maybe she needs to get the hell over it, my God, calm down, Regina.

When Tuck finishes his business and heads for home instead of back up her walk, Regina curses softly under her breath and follows after him.

"Damn dog," she mutters, catching up with him as he sits, tail thumping, on the front porch.

Her belly wriggles with nerves, but she punches the doorbell anyway. Call it morbid curiosity, call it an intense desire to not have Tuck trying to join her on the sofa when she stretches out there to read a book later. Whatever it is, she does it.

John answers, and she lets out a breath of relief so obvious she feels her cheeks flare.

He gives her a wry look, and says, "I hear he saddled you with babysitting."

Regina bobs her brows, half-rolls her eyes, and says, "It's alright; the other one's been asleep for the last hour and a half. But this one—" she points to the dog "—apparently wanted to come home."

He's already weaving around John, headed back into the house, and John chuckles, says, "Probably hungry. You can send Roland home whenever you want; I'm here to keep an eye on him."

 _So is his father_ , Regina thinks darkly. She knows they're here, because she can hear the faint echo of music coming from the back of the house, can hear a high, lyrical laugh at something when it pauses.

"He's fine," Regina dismisses, suddenly wanting very badly to be back in her own house. "We'll see what kind of mood he's in when he wakes up. If he's a little monster, I'll bring him home."

John laughs, says, "Oh, thanks."

"Anytime," Regina grins, and then, "But I'm about to sweat through my t-shirt for the second time today, so I think I'm going to head back to my air conditioning."

They say their goodbyes, and she heads home to find a sleepy toddler trudging down the stairs, one hand gripping a slat in the banister with each step, the other rubbing his eyes. She meets him halfway and offers him a hand to hold, but he shakes his head with a surly _Nuh uh_ _,_ and insists on making his own way down.

He's not quite a little monster, but he's whiny, didn't wake well, and they end up cuddled together in one of the arm chairs for a little while, Roland's silky curls against her bare shoulder as she rocks a little, and he dozes a bit. She scratches his scalp, rubs his shoulders, and has the bruising, unbidden thought that if Robin really does move on, whether it's with this woman or the next, she stands to lose this. Someone else will be there to rock his little boy, and press soft, soothing kisses to his brow, and murmur, "Of course, baby," when he whines that he's hungry and can they have a snack.

She aches at the thought, and tells herself for the hundredth time that she should have had more willpower. Should have been better about distance. Should have kept to herself, and not let their lives get so deeply knotted up, because someday that knot will have to unravel, someday their strings will be handed off to other people. She was so stupid.

She cuts apples into thin slices, and scoops almond butter from the jar in the fridge, snacks on a few pieces of apple while Roland manages to get himself sticky eating his, and then cuts another apple when Henry wanders out from the den (she'd begrudgingly relented and told him he could spend the rest of the afternoon trying to pass this level of _Epic Mickey_ if he so desired).

It's not much more than an hour later when the doorbell rings, and she finds Robin standing on the other side of it, a grateful smile, and easy, loose stance. Like he didn't just dump his kid on her so he could spend time with another woman. Or maybe exactly like he _did_ do that, and doesn't care.

The sight of him churns up all that jealousy again, makes her burn even brighter green, and she has an irrational fantasy of yanking him inside, pinning him to the wall and kissing him until he remembers he's _hers_. But he's _not_ hers, and she's not allowed to feel these things – these stupid, weak, childish things – but she _does_ , and it angers her.

So she answers the "Thank you," he uses as his greeting with, "I'll go get Roland; don't let all the cold air out," and leaves him standing there in the doorway as she goes to do just that.

When she returns from the den (Roland had joined Henry there, had been watching with rapt attention as Henry had attempted to beat Petetronic and head on to the next level, and he does not come without some firm coaxing), Robin is standing inside the closed door, his grateful smile now a befuddled frown, hands tucked in his pockets and that easy posture a bit more stiff.

Good. They can both be uncomfortable, then.

"Did you have a good time with Regina?" Robin asks his son, but his gaze keeps flicking back to her.

"Uh huh," Roland says, and then he's asking Robin the same thing he'd asked her but moments ago, "Can I stay til Henry beats Atronic?"

Robin frowns, asks, "Who?"

"Petetronic," Regina sighs. "He's playing _Epic Mickey_ , and Roland, I already told you that you need to go home with your Daddy. It's almost dinner time, and you didn't even really have lunch. You must be hungry again, hmm?"

"Yeah, but we could have dinner here," Roland reasons. "Yours is better anyway."

She smirks a little at that, and so does Robin because they both know it's true. But his smirk falters when she tells Roland simply, "No, baby. Time to go home."

She's kicking them out and he knows it, but from the look on his face he doesn't quite understand why, and it spikes anger in her chest all over again. Why are men so obtuse? So oblivious to their actions, to their own stupidity.

Roland's "Awwww, man," sounds enough like Henry's to make a tiny kernel of affection pop in the hot steam of her chest, but then she's reminded that there's another woman, another blonde, pretty, surely-her-polar-opposite-just-like-Emma-Swan woman no doubt about to be the one he whines to over dinner if things continue to go well, and that little kernel shrivels back into an old maid.

Fitting name, she thinks.

And then Robin is saying her name, "Regina," in that way he does that usually makes her warm, but today leaves her feeling cold, his voice soft as he asks, "Should I be apologizing for springing him on you today?"

"Probably," Regina sighs, and then she tells him, "But I have dinner to make, and laundry to switch, and a bath to take, and so I simply don't have time to hear it." She bends to press a kiss to Roland's curls, gives him a warm, "Have a good night, sweetheart" and sends them packing, Robin still frowning uneasily.

She gets that apology ten minutes later, a lengthy text saying he's sorry if he offended her, he didn't think she'd mind, and he had asked after all, and if there's something else he's done to upset her, please tell him so he can right it.

Regina doesn't answer.

Jealousy is an ugly emotion, and she doesn't wear it well.


	29. Chapter 29

He texts her again the next afternoon, her phone lighting up with a notification that she tries and fails to keep herself from reading.

_I shouldn't have sprung him on you like that and I should've taken the dog. I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were mad when I left._

Regina sighs, and tells herself she's being unreasonable. That it is perfectly acceptable for him to spend time with another woman, and entirely ridiculous for her to be so petty about it. But there's that _ache_ in her chest at the thought of it, and she just can't bring herself to push down the green resentment.

But she texts back, _I wasn't. It's fine._ And hopes to leave it at that.

A minute later, though, her phone chimes again: _You were mad about something. If there's something else I did wrong, tell me._

She reads the message, reads it again, and tells him the truth: _There's not._ Because he hasn't done anything wrong. He _hasn't_. She needs to snap out of it. And she will. Tomorrow, maybe.

_So we're okay?_

_Yes._

_You're sure?_

_Yes._

_Your responses are not convincing me_

" _Yes" isn't clear?_

_You're being short_

_I'm at work._

_Busy day?_

_Yes._

(It's not, not really…)

_I'll leave you to it then. Thanks again for yesterday_

She stares at that one for a while, runs her thumb over the glass of her screen, and then locks her phone, sets it aside.

They should talk. She should talk to him. But about what? What would she even say?

So she puts him out of her mind (or tries to), focuses on her work, focuses on smiling blithely and telling Sidney he doesn't have to do that, no really doesn't have to do that, please, when he brings her a coffee from the break room after he stops by to get his own. It has too much cream, and tastes thick on her tongue.

She leaves most of it to go cold.

**.::.**

Marian arrives to pick up Roland at just after six on Monday night; Robin frowns as he lets her in and goes to gather Roland's things. She'd said she might be early today, but he hadn't been counting on her being _this_ early, and anyway he'd told her to take her time. That there was no rush.

What he hadn't told her, what she wouldn't understand, is that he _needs_ Roland tonight. He doesn't believe a word of Regina's reassuring texts – he knows her by now, knows the way she talks, the way she texts. Even when she's busy, she has less… tone. She'd been curt today. Short. Had used altogether too few syllables and too many periods, and so he doesn't believe that everything is as fine as she claims.

She's clearly irritated by something, and Robin is fairly certain that something is his doing. There must be something more, something he did or didn't do, or something someone else did that set her off. And Roland is his ticket in the door. His free pass to walk into her foyer and try to ply her with kind eyes and penitent dimples.

So Marian being here a full hour early is inconvenient to say the least. But what can he do?

Telling her the truth is not an option, so he packs the last of Roland's things into his little backpack, kisses his cheek, and passes him off to his mum.

That's when the waterworks start.

When he realizes that he's headed home with Mama and not over to Regina's, Roland lets out a wail of protest, moans, "But Regina's making tacooooos."

Robin has to fight between an amused smile and a firm frown, manages something in between and reminds the boy, "You go to Regina's when Mama can't get you in time for Henry's lessons. But she's here today, so now it's time to go home and have supper with your own mum."

"B-but she asked me," he sobs, suddenly inconsolable about tacos of all things. "I s-said I wan-ted them-m an-and she sai-id I coulllllld."

Robin exhales through his nose, tells Marian, "He napped at her place yesterday; I had to rehearse, she must have—"

"You had to rehearse?" Marian questioned, brows rising. "On the weekend?"

"Yes, on the bloody weekend," Robin grumbles. "I've a gig coming up, a favor for a friend who got hurt. I figured Roland could watch a movie for an hour, or color in the corner or something. But we were all at the park, he got tired, Regina offered to take him home to nap where it was quiet." Her lips press together as she bounces a still sobbing Roland gently, her palm rubbing circles into his back, and Robin can just see the way she's trying to decide if this is something she ought to be bothered by. "I'm not neglecting him," he heads her off, reasoning, "I wouldn't have been spending time with him while he was asleep anyway."

She sighs a little, and nods, then turns her attention to Roland, her voice sweet as sugar when she tells him, "Maybe we can get some tacos on our way home, munchkin. Would that be okay?"

It most certainly will not be, if the blaring "Nooooo!" his son lets out is any indication. And then she _does_ look annoyed, her eyes flicking heavenward, the whole thing not improved any by their son's, "Sh-she's making-g them special for me-e-e. I won't be-e-e there."

Robin glances at his watch, tells Roland, "It's only just past six, my boy, I'm sure she hasn't started yet. She can save them for next time."

Roland lets out another ornery wail, worked well and up into a good tantrum now.

Robin meets eyes with Marian, who mutters, "She must be very special," in a way that makes it sound like things with Regina are more than they are. But then, she's not oblivious to Regina's existence, and she did show up to him in a hungover stupor over her not too long ago.

"She's a great cook," Robin explains. "I might cry over missing her tacos, too." And then he blows out a breath and tries again with Roland, only a tiny selfish sliver of him taking advantage with, "What if we went over now so you could say hello and ask Regina if you can have tacos _next_ week instead, hmm?"

"No, now," Roland whines.

"Roland, it's that or go straight home," he tells the boy, firmly but not unkindly. He doesn't want Marian to think he's letting Roland run the show when she's not around, even if he is, a bit, sometimes.

Roland heaves another wet sob, but finally nods his head. "'Kay."

He tells Marian, "I'm sorry," and "We'll be quick," not entirely surprised when she pushes a few strands of hair back off her face with her free hand and says that if they're going over, she might as well go with them and finally meet the person her son is spending all this time with.

"Lord knows, I hear plenty about her," she adds with just enough irritation for Robin to think he probably should have arranged a meeting sooner.

He lets it slide, says to Roland, "Now, it's early, so she might not be home yet from work. But we'll see, okay?"

His wailing has died down to hitching breaths, his head now tucked into Marian's neck, and he's sullen as he nods again.

And so they go.

**.::.**

Regina has just walked in the door when the bell rings. She scowls, setting her purse down in the kitchen as she hears Henry's "Got it!" followed by the slap of his bare feet on the hardwoods as he trots down the hall.

And then she hears, "Oh, hey, Robin," and her stomach sinks.

Maybe he's just here to drop off Roland; she'd promised him tacos for dinner yesterday. No use in drawing this out, she decides, taking a deep breath and stalking toward the front of the house.

What she finds when she gets there has her faltering. It's not just Robin, it's the whole Locksley family. Robin is introducing Henry to his ex, who looks less than pleased, but like she's trying not to show it, a small-but-obviously-forced smile on her lips, Roland resting on her hip.

"Well, it looks like the gang's all here," Regina says, adopting a falsely pleasant demeanor much like Marian, but hoping that hers is more convincing. She's had a lifetime of practice at looking far less miserable than she feels, a natural side effect of years of attending social functions with her parents.

Roland's head pops up from Marian's shoulder at the sound of Regina's voice, and he surges toward her, arms outstretched. She and Marian move at the same time, Marian's hand shooting up to brace his torso as Regina rushes forward to catch him from the other side. It ends up with Regina's hand splayed over Marian's on Roland's side, and both of them looking at each other a little awkwardly as Roland twists even further toward Regina.

Regina gives the other woman an apologetic smile, trying to imagine how she'd feel if her kid was so desperate to climb onto someone else. Not good, that's for sure.

But Marian just answers with a wry smile in kind and explains, "Someone was very upset to be picked up before taco night."

"Oh," Regina realizes, shifting Roland to her hip as Marian surrenders him willingly. "I see." She rakes her fingers through his curls and says to him, "Luckily for Roland, I haven't started making dinner yet. We can have tacos next time you're here, sweetheart."

"Aw, man," Henry mutters beside them and she gives him a warning look. Now is not the time for male solidarity; she can make tacos twice if she has to.

"No, now," Roland whines, and from here she can see the fading flush of his cheeks, the splotchiness that comes from a good tearful tantrum. Someone has been in a bit of a snit, it seems.

"Your mommy is here now," Regina tells him, swaying him back and forth just a little, hoping to settle him the rest of the way. "Don't you want to have dinner with her?"

"No, tacos," Roland whines again, and Regina flicks her gaze over to find Marian rolling her eyes a little. She resolutely does not look at Robin as he frowns over his ex's shoulder.

"Roland, we can have tacos another night. Thank you for coming over straight away to tell me to save them for you – now, I know to keep them for next weekend."

He's having none of it. "But I want tacos now."

"Roland—"

"Please?" he whines and she frowns; she hates whining. Doesn't tolerate it.

"Whining doesn't work on me," she tells him, careful to keep her voice light and kind. She doesn't want to overstep in front of his mother, but, well, it's her house and her rules. "If you want something, ask like the big boy that you are."

He scowls a little, and then turns big dark eyes on her, his little lip jutting out. Dammit. Her heart clenches, that pitiful little face tugging at her resolve. But she made it through ten years of Henry, she can make it through a few minutes of this. Dimples and all.

So she tells him again, "Tacos next week. Home tonight."

"We could all have tacos tonight," he tries, just shy of a whine, and then she's giving her own son a firm _Henry, not now_ when he starts to agree ("Yeah, we still have time before my lesson, and it's been a while since—").

Regina keeps her attention on Roland, asking him "Could we?" Those curls bounce as he nods. "Who said?"

"Henry," Roland answers, but Regina shakes her head.

"Henry isn't in charge; try again."

Roland scowls at that, his little brow knitting before the light bulb seems to go off and he says, "Regina, could we all have tacos tonight? Even Mama?"

"Magic word?"

"Please, can we all have tacos?" he amends dutifully.

"Better," she praises, combing through his curls and looking to Marian. Regina offers a little lift of her eyebrows, a silent _Fine by me_ , even though it isn't, not really. She's desperately hoping that Marian will shake her head, will say no, will give her an out.

But she doesn't. She nods, and Robin exhales beside her, and Regina feels a little bit like she just got played by the Locksley boys and her own son.

Her smile is tight when she turns it toward Roland and says, "I suppose we can all have tacos tonight; even Mama. Since you asked so nicely."

He perks up, sits straighter against her, eyes bright now, and dimples popping out when he grins. "Really?"

"Really," she assures, giving him a squeeze and then settling him on the floor. "Do you want to show your Mama where the kitchen is?"

Roland is all too happy to do so, reaching for Marian's hand and practically dragging her through the living room, giving her the grand tour as he goes "that's the piano" and "that's where we read books" and "that's the toilet" and "and here's where we cook!"

Henry's hot on their heels, Regina falling into step behind them and trying to keep pace, but Robin's legs are longer, and she feels the warmth of his gentle grip around her elbow a moment later.

"Thank you," he says when she slows her steps ever so slightly at the interruption. She looks at him properly, finally. He's wearing that damn blue t-shirt that makes his eyes look like oceans she could drown in. He also looks a little uneasy, but, well, what can one expect when one is juggling three women in their lives (he's not juggling, she reminds herself – Marian is over and things between the two of them never really began. It's not juggling if you only really have one ball in the air). She pushes down her more unpleasant emotions as he gives her a lopsided smile and a, "He had a right tantrum over missing taco night."

Regina sighs, and apologizes, tells him, "I just assumed he'd be here. I asked him yesterday if there was anything he wanted for dinner, and he said tacos. So I said I'd make them, just for him."

That lopsided smile evens out into something warm and wonderful that makes all her joints feel loose in a way they have no right to, and he says, "Well, no wonder he threw a fit. His own personal taco night. I'd cry, too."

"Mmhmm," Regina hums doubtfully. And then she turns for the kitchen, because spending any longer alone with him won't lead to anything more than useless pining. And she's not that pathetic – at least, she doesn't want to be.

"Regina, wait," he sighs. She doesn't. "Can we talk for a minute?"

"About what?"

"I wish I knew. But I know something's not right."

"Everything's fine, Robin. I told you—"

"I don't believe—"

"Well, that's not really my problem," she sighs, "but if you'll excuse me, I have guests to tend to; I need to go make a good impression with your ex."

"Wait—" That hand finds her elbow again and grips, tighter this time, but he lets go the minute she attempts to shake him off. He gets what he wants, though – she stops and turns to face him, arms crossing protectively over her chest. "Are you not okay with this? Because he's three, babe, he doesn't have to get his way."

"It's fine. Everything's fine," she insists wearily, "It's just.. I _just_ walked in the door, I haven't really had time to settle in yet, and I wasn't expecting to entertain. This place isn't exactly company ready."

Robin frowns at that, glances around the room quickly, and tells her, "If this isn't company ready, I should never have guests." Her lips twitch, and when she has to fight to keep from smiling, she scolds herself internally for her lack of resolve. And then Robin is reaching for her biceps, smoothing his palms down them and urging, "Go upstairs. Take a minute, get settled in. We'll be alright."

Regia scoffs. "You don't abandon guests; that's rude."

"It's not abandonment," he reasons, those palms sliding up and back down; Regina presses her thumbs hard against the insides of her arms to keep from squeezing them in a way he might actually notice. "I'm here, so is Henry. Go, take a moment for yourself. You had a busy day, yeah?"

She didn't, and the lie eats her for a second until she remembers that she's by far the more honest of the two of them. "Offer her a drink," she tells him by way of surrender. "We have seltzer, juice, I can open a bottle of wine."

"Go," he repeats, but she stands her ground for a minute more.

"If I'm walking away for a minute, you're making sure she gets a proper welcome," Regina insists, and Robin gives her one more rub and then a gentle squeeze, a warm smile.

"I promise," he swears as his hands fall away from her. "She'll be well taken care of, now go take a minute to unwind. Let the men handle things."

Regina rolls her eyes, mutters, "Don't light anything on fire or break anything while I'm up there," and starts to walk past him, toward the stairs and a little reprieve.

"Such confidence you have in us," Robin teases toward her retreating back.

She's not really sure whether to laugh or cry.

**.::.**

Henry is already standing in the door of the fridge listing off every liquid he can see ("Milk, apple juice, ginger ale, seltzer…") when Robin walks into the kitchen. So much for having to keep up the hospitality – the boy is clearly his mother's son.

"Where's Regina?" Roland asks as soon as he realizes she's not with them. Marian has him perched on her lap at one of the kitchen chairs, arms looped around his middle like the boy is a teddy bear or a shield. This may be a very terrible idea, dinner, all five of them.

Still, he assures his son, "Regina will be back down in a minute," ruffling his curls and making him giggle.

Marian chuckles quietly and rakes her fingers through his locks, smoothing them back into place as best she can, before telling Robin, "He needs a haircut. I meant to ask you to do it this weekend."

"I was thinking about buzzing it all off yesterday," he admits, skimming his gaze over the kitchen as he steps up to peer around Henry. "It's so bleeding hot out."

Regina's purse and phone are resting on the table near where Marian is sitting, and there are still some dishes in the sink; a bowl and plate and some silverware – she must have left in a hurry this morning if she didn't put them in to wash as usual. The countertops are clean, aside from a stack of mail.

If she was anyone other than Regina, he'd think her insistence that the place isn't suitable for guests was ridiculous. But he knows her, and more importantly he's met her mother, and so Robin thinks he understands.

His thoughts are interrupted by Marian's warning, "If you buzz his hair, Robin Francis, I swear to God…"

Robin winces, unsurprised when Henry whips his head around to look at him, eyes wide. "Your middle name is Francis?" he demands.

"Yes, it is," Robin sighs, "And thank you for that, Marian; I do so love being middle-named in front of the children."

"If you shave off these curls, you deserve it."

"I like my hair," Roland declares, lifting a little hand to tug at it.

" _Francis?_ " Henry repeats, still incredulous, and it's not as though it's _that_ uncommon of a name. Christ.

"Weren't you getting the lady a drink?" he deflects, raising his brows pointedly. "I assured your mum Marian would been well taken care of if she took a minute to powder her nose, and here you are letting all the cold air out of the fridge and mocking me."

Henry is still giving him that face, but he says, "Sorry," And then to Marian, "Do you need me to list them again?"

She doesn't, Marian tells him, and then she asks for the ginger ale, and so does Roland (he gets overruled by his mum and ends up with the juice), and Robin makes a point of standing extra close to make Henry laugh and push at him, before he reaches around him to grab the lone bottle of beer in the door of the fridge.

Henry pulls out the half-empty two-liter of ginger ale, while Robin reaches into the cupboard for glasses for each of them, only to find the supply quite dwindled. He pulls down a plastic cup for Roland, and a tall glass for Marian, then reaches over and pops the dishwasher open to take a peek.

Sure enough, it's full, and a quick pull of the top rack reveals shiny, clean glassware.

"Can I have my Orioles cup?" Henry asks him. "It's in there, I think."

"If you never tell your mother about my middle name," Robin mutters, letting the door drop and pulling the rack out the rest of the way until he can find the cup in question, passing it over despite Henry's utter refusal to keep this particular secret. Then he sets himself to the task of emptying the dishwasher and putting everything back in its (hopefully) proper place, while Marian and Henry chat about school starting soon, and where he attends.

Robin is tucking those few dishes from the sink into the now-empty dishwasher when Regina resurfaces a few minutes later. She's traded her pencil skirt for dark jeans, and her pumps for flats, but kept the button-front blouse she'd been wearing. One of the top buttons strains a bit, the one right over her tits, and Robin has to resist the fantasy of it finally giving up and both of them finally giving in, him bending her over the table (they're alone in this brief little fantasy, of course) – but thinking this way is never going to fix whatever the hell has got her dander so up the last twenty-four hours, so he should probably stop.

She's apologizing to Marian for ducking upstairs to change, saying, "You caught me right as I was getting in the door, and if I had to spend another minute in those heels..." and then, "Did Robin get you something to drink?"

"Henry did, actually," Marian tells her, lifting her ginger ale for another sip after complimenting, "He's very polite."

Regina smiles that way she does any time someone commends her for her parenting skills, and gives an appreciative, "He is. Thank you."

As she turns to hunt down her own drink in the fridge, Regina glances at the now-empty sink, at the dishwasher he's just now closing, and he doesn't miss the way she almost smiles. Almost, but not quite, there's something underneath it, and for the life of him he cannot place the look on her face. Maybe this whole thing was a terrible idea, coming here, bringing Marian, putting her on the spot like this. But he never imagined they'd be staying, that they'd end up having dinner here.

He just thought maybe he'd have gotten a moment to speak to her in person, to clear things up, to get to the bottom of this sudden wedge between them.

She grabs the seltzer, takes the clean glass Robin hands over with a quiet and far too polite "Thank you."

And then Henry betrays him, the little bugger, piping up with, "Did you know Robin's middle name is Francis?"

Regina freezes, that careful expression twitching into an undeniable smirk, although she does manage not to laugh at him as she tells her son, "No. No, I did not. How'd you find that out?"

"Marian said it," Henry tells her. "When Robin said he was gonna buzz Roland's hair."

Her expression drops again, goes stony, as she turns dark eyes on him and orders, "Don't you dare touch those curls."

"That's what I said," Marian tells her from the table.

"It's hot," Robin reasons.

"They're gorgeous," Regina counters.

"You know, I'm not sure you two meeting was such a good idea," he scowls, although secretly, he's glad to see her looking a bit more like herself. And willingly speaking to him. "I don't like you ganging up on me."

"Well, then don't suggest something so blatantly stupid," Regina retorts tartly, punctuating it by finally twisting open the cap on her seltzer and releasing a quick, rushing hiss of carbonation. His hope in her turning mood is short-lived when she practically cold shoulders him, reaching into the freezer to fill her glass nearly to the top with ice.

Marian, seemingly satisfied with having an ally in the battle for their son's hair, shifts the topic just a little to the left, musing, "You know, Henry was one of the names we considered for Roland," and Regina pauses, seltzer bottle back in hand, her gaze flicking toward Robin for only the briefest of seconds. "But we named him after my step-father instead."

"Really?" Regina asks, with a little frown as she begins to pour. Robin takes a deep swig of his own drink and studies the line of her profile, wishing he could find some answers to her sour mood in the shape of it. "Robin never mentioned," she continues, stitching on a smile by the time she turns to tell Marian, "Henry is named after my father. My mother said it was too old fashioned and he'd be teased for it, but now it's coming back into vogue and I feel vindicated. And at least it's not Francis."

"Ha ha," Robin remarks dryly, watching as they chuckle a little at each other. He's not overly thrilled that he's become the butt of the jokes tonight, but he can't say he's not relieved that they're getting along. That they're both relaxing a little.

"Grandma didn't like my name?" Henry asks from where he's settled at the table, and Regina's smile immediately shifts away, her brow knitting as she rushes to correct him.

"Grandma likes to be contrary," she tells him, one hand cupped under her glass as the other taps fingertips against the side of it. "She wanted a different name; she didn't get her way. She's let it go."

"That's a shock," Robin mutters under his breath as Henry asks what name Cora had wanted. Clearly this is a story he hasn't heard before.

He watches Regina squint a bit over the memory. "William, I remember that," she answers, sipping her drink. "And for your middle name… God, what was it? She had a whole list, but I think the one she commissioned the nursery artwork for was William Everett."

Marian's brows lift, her voice colored with amusement and surprise as she asks, "She commissioned art with a name you hadn't agreed on?"

Regina heaves an eye roll and says, "Of course she did. She thought it would force my hand. But he's Henry Daniel, because she isn't the one who spent twenty-eight hours in labor, and she wasn't allowed in the room."

"Smart," Marian remarks.

Regina's brows rise, her eyes widening as she tells his ex, "You have no idea."

"I'm sure your dad was happy about the name," Marian comments, and Robin looks to Regina again, watches her gaze soften that way it sometimes does when she talks about her father. Her eyes go warm, her lips curving in a small smile. His heart does a fluttering little flip at the sight, and he thinks she's rarely been more beautiful than she is right in this moment.

"He cried when I told him," she admits, and Henry's brows go up.

"He did?" he asks incredulously.

"Of course he did," Regina chuckles. "You know Grandpa. He cries at the good Hallmark commercials; of course he cried when he found out I was naming you after him. You should have seen him the first time he _held_ you; I think he might have cried more than I did. He's very proud of you, you know."

Henry smiles, and nods a little. Says, "Yeah. He tells me I'm his favorite grandson. But I'm his only grandson, so that doesn't make much sense."

Regina laughs a little again, shaking her head at the thought of her dad's bad jokes and taking another sip of her drink. Things go quiet for a moment, or at least, quiet aside from Roland asking why he can't have ginger ale, too, why he's stuck with apple juice.

Marian tells him that soda has too much sugar, it'll rot his teeth, and Roland frowns.

"You and Daddy and Henry still have teeth," he argues. "Even Regina has bubbles – look."

Regina makes a little _ahh_ sound next to him and then asks, "Is it the bubbles that you want?" Roland nods, curls swishing. Her eyes go just a little mischievous as she starts to amble toward the table, urging Roland to, "Close your eyes, and when you open them again, your juice will be bubbly, just like Henry's ginger ale."

"Nuh uh," Roland denies doubtfully, but Regina is insistent.

"I promise," she tells him. "Eyes closed, and count to ten."

He scowls, but he listens, Marian helping him count up slowly as Regina silently lifts his glass and takes three big gulps of juice herself, before carefully pouring some of her own seltzer in to replace it. She's trying to avoid losing her ice – it would ruin the magic a bit, he supposes – and she's successful, settling the glass back exactly where she'd lifted it from just as Marian and Roland finish up their very drawn out _Nine_ and _Ten._

Roland pops his eyes back open, and sees his drink and its little collection of bubbles, and his eyes go wide. His grin as he demands to know "How'd you do that?" is enough for Robin to fall for Regina all over again.

A feeling that's not helped at all by the way she bops her finger against the end of his nose and whispers, "Magic."

Roland scoops up his juice, takes a big gulp and _Mmmmm_ s, and Regina turns back toward Robin, smirking. No, not toward Robin, he realizes, when she keeps her eye contact studiously two feet to his left and zones in on the fridge, saying something about how they'd better get started on those tacos if Henry was going to get his lesson tonight.

Marian straightens a little at that, asks, "What can I do?" but Regina waves her off.

"Nothing. Sit," she insists, telling her, "You're a guest; guests don't help," as she pulls out packets of chicken breast, and bell peppers, a package of pre-diced onions that he hopes she doesn't think his son will actually eat, her trusty jar of salsa…

Marian, meanwhile, is fighting for her manners, saying, "No, I insist. I can't just sit here while you cook for me."

"You can, and you will," Regina tells her, polite but no-nonsense. A tone Robin is well-acquainted with by now.

"Let her," Henry says knowingly. "That's her you-already-lost voice."

Regina turns a quick glare to Henry, before unearthing more items from the fridge, and Roland gives a solemn, "Yep," that has Robin snorting slightly into his beer.

"Oh, really?" Marian asks their son.

"Yeah, it's how she says I had to eat my peas," he tells her forlornly.

Regina laughs a little next to him, shaking her head and drawing Robin's attention. She's been piling taco fixings in the narrow strip between fridge and sink, but she's short on space, to say the least. So Robin begins to nick things from the pile, shifting the salsa and the onions to the wider stretch of countertop, and intercepting the tortillas she's just pulled out.

She frowns when he takes them from her, mutters, "I've got it; go sit."

"Don't be silly," he reasons, "Let me help."

"Tacos are easy," she tells him quietly, her polite-but-no-nonsense shifting more toward the frosty side of things. Lovely. "I don't need help."

He grabs for the bell peppers next, keeps his voice low to match hers as if the others aren't just a meter away, and says, "Let me just help you get sorted then; you're running out of room."

Her eyes flash, mouth tightening for a moment as she huffs out a breath, and then she's hissing, "Robin, what part of 'I've got it' was unclear?"

It's a sharp lash of words that stings him right in the chest, has him dropping the peppers next to the onions with a bit more force than perhaps is warranted before he mutters a dark, "Sorry. I was just trying to help," and scoops up his beer again, walking toward the far end of the table to give her sudden temper a bit of room to burn off.

He can see the tension in her body as she pointedly shifts everything from where it was to where he was bloody putting all of it anyway, and he scowls, glances over to find Marian looking between them, not unaware of the sudden tension in the room. And neither is Henry, who has narrowed his eyes, looking from Robin to his mum before he asks, "Are you two fighting again?"

Regina stills for half a second, before she answers evenly, "No, we are not."

Robin fights the urge to snort at the ridiculousness of her claim, although to be fair they're not so much _fighting_ as they are living in some mysterious cloud of whatever the fuck is going on that she insists on being so damn tight-lipped about.

Henry's not having it either, asks his mum, "Are you lying to me?"

Regina turns with a show of temper he's rarely seen her level Henry with – nothing mean about it, but her face is all business as she drawls a disbelieving, " _Excuse_ me?"

Henry doesn't quite shrink, but he drops the subject immediately with a chastened little, "Sorry."

"You do not sass in front of guests, young man," she tells him firmly, and while she has none of the malice, or cunning, or cruelty, he catches a glimpse of her mother in the reprimand. He's committed a grave sin against propriety, and it won't be stood for, that much is quite clear.

"I said I'm sorry," Henry repeats, and Regina seems mollified, giving him a little nod and turning back to swipe a few limes from the fridge before closing the door resolutely.

The tension from her mercurial mood thickens in the ensuing silence, spends a whole thirty seconds percolating before Regina exhales heavily and leaves her prep work to close the distance between herself and Henry's chair. She bends a little so they're eye level, and keeps her voice quiet, almost a whisper, as she says, "I'm sorry if I embarrassed you," and of course she'd think that, because no doubt she's been on the receiving end of a blistering public take-down, even though that's not even close to what she'd just subjected Henry to. She shifts a little, enough that she's full-on toward Henry now, her back entirely to Marian, and if Robin hadn't leaned just a little bit to the left he probably wouldn't be able to make out what she says when she drops her voice even lower. But he can still see her mouth as she whispers, "But your question embarrassed _me_ , and I got angry. I haven't had a very good day – but that's not your fault. So I'm sorry."

"I shouldn't have asked in front of company," Henry tells her, not quite as good as she is at keeping his voice between just the two of them.

"No, you shouldn't have."

"But you've been weird all night."

She sighs a little, and Robin is about to speak up, to gently tell the boy to drop it, to leave her be. Regina speaks before he gets his chance.

"It's not a fight. But it's not something I want to talk about in front of—" her voice drops almost impossibly lower, her expression pointed "—Robin's ex girlfriend."

Henry straightens a little, letting out a dawning, "Ohhh…" and Robin watches as Regina gives him a self-deprecating little smile and whispers, _Yeah_. "Sorry," Henry tells her again, his wince evident in his voice.

"It's okay," she assures, giving his shoulder a little squeeze and then telling him, "I love you."

"Love you too," Henry says, and then he's squirming and groaning as she leans in and presses a kiss to his forehead. "Not in front of _people_."

Regina chuckles and gives him a look, one that he thinks roughly translates into _Payback_ , and then she heads back to her countertop full of goodies. Robin wants to hold on to his ire at her flashing temper, but he can't quite manage it after watching her make good with her son. He wonders for the umpteenth time what has her so off-kilter today, wonders again what he's done to make her so moody. And it has to be him, because she's perfectly pleasant to everyone else.

Unless, he's just a convenient punching bag. Someone she knows she can spit bitter words at and be forgiven later. Maybe this isn't him at all, just like she says; maybe her bad day, her bad mood, are someone else's doing. Someone he can wrap his hands around and squeeze until they—

Her phone rings on the table, a jarring, rattling buzz, and she turns at the sound to ask Marian who's calling.

Marian reaches for the phone, lifts it to read the display and says, "Cora?"

Robin's stomach swoops for reasons unknown, and he watches Marian carefully as he listens to Regina tell her, "Let it go. Definitely let it go."

"You don't want to talk to Grandma?" Henry asks, and Robin places that sudden drop in his stomach. They've talked at length about Henry's grandfather, and now her mother is in the picture, and Marian is not a stupid woman, not by any stretch of the imagination.

So he watches, carefully, as Regina tells Henry, "Not at the moment, no. We have company. Grandma can wait."

He barely listens to Regina. All he can take in right now is the sight of Marian, her eyes narrowing just a little, head tilting just so, wheels no doubt spinning, cogs no doubt turning. He remembers vividly, will never forget, the cold fury in her eyes that night in their living room as she'd sat behind that paper tag from the bottom of that silk-lined box: _To my dear heart, Cora, on our anniversary. Love, Henry._

Henry hadn't jogged her mind any, or if it had, she hadn't let on. There are plenty of _Henry_ s in the world, after all. But Cora, Cora is less common, and the two together, and a married couple no less, well, what are the odds?

Slim indeed, and they both know it.

Her head swivels slowly on her neck, or maybe it just seems that way to him, but by the time Marian's gaze meets his, her eyes, those dark eyes he used to love so much, are like saucers, wary and shocked and doubtful all at once. There's a question there, a plain as day one, and Robin heads her off as her jaw drops (he hopes she'd not be daft enough to actually ask aloud, but he's not willing to take that chance), answering the question before she even asks it:

"She knows."

**.::.**

"She knows," Robin says, and Regina is so busy trying to tamp down the anxious butterflies that came from the comically inappropriate timing of her mother's call (because _of course_ Mother would call when she's just bawled out her son in front of company, when she's made a damn fool of herself because she cannot keep her stupid, useless feelings in check around this man who just wants to help her make some damn tacos while he fucks some blonde thing on the side. _Oh God, rein it in, Regina. The histrionics are entirely unnecessary, beneath you, so pedestrian, you are better than that._ And why should she take Mother's call when she has her own personal inner Cora, firmly lodged in her brain, ready to belittle at any moment.)

But something in Robin's voice draws her attention, something in the finality and reassurance, and she looks to find Marian staring at him with this look she absolutely cannot describe in any other way than the very embodiment of _What the fuck?_

Regina rewinds the tape in her brain, tries to pull back the conversation, to figure out just what someone knows – who knows? She knows? – but all she can come up with is her mother calling.

 _Who is it?_ And then _Cora?_ And then _She knows._

Marian tears her gaze finally from Robin when Roland whines, "Mama you're squishing me," releasing him with a numb sort of _Oh_. He wriggles off of her lap and toddles toward Regina, but she's still busy trying to figure out what she's missed.

It's not until she locks eyes with Robin (something she's been studiously avoiding on account of that stupid blue shirt), and catches the pointedness of his gaze in return, that everything clicks.

Her belly goes hot and heavy, drops into her shoes like a lead weight. They've never discussed the specifics of Marian finding out he'd stolen a small fortune in jewelry from her parents, but whatever it was, it must have involved names. Cora. And Henry. Cora, her mother who just called, and Henry, the father whose name she passed down to her son.

 _She knows_.

Well, that's one way to rip that Band-Aid off, now isn't it.

Marian is still reeling, has grabbed her cup and taken a long gulp, and Regina hates Robin just a little bit today, but she also lo— Likes him very much — and so she takes pity on him, and goes for the same reassuring, casual tone that he had tried for when she confirms, "Yes. I know."

Roland is tugging at her jeans, asking, "Can I help you make the tacos?"

Regina reaches down to scoop him up onto her hip, ignoring his question in favor of the one Henry scowls at her: "You know what?"

"Nothing," Regina answers firmly, and Henry lets out one of his typically dramatic sighs.

"Why is the answer always 'nothing'?" he laments, with all the dramatic flair he probably inherited from her.

She doesn't want to be unkind to him, not again, so Regina stays flippant about the whole thing, telling him evenly, "Because some things are not your business."

"It's never my business when it's about you and Robin," Henry grouses.

Never one to miss a good opportunity when it steps right in front of her, Regina smiles and tells him, "Oh, that's a good philosophy; I think we should stick to it."

Henry's heaving sigh of exasperation is exactly the sort of histrionics her mother would have scolded her for once upon a time. But Regina just laughs a little at him, and says, "Why don't you take Roland into the other room while we make the tacos. You can keep working on Petetronic."

Roland bounces a little in her hold, aghast as he marvels, "You still need to beat Atronic?!"

"Yeah, it seems he's a tough kitty," Regina sympathizes.

Henry isn't fooled, and clearly isn't too scarred by her earlier scolding, because he accuses her with, "You're just trying to get rid of me."

"Yes," she confirms. No use lying about it. "I am. Now, go." She gives Roland a little squeeze and then settles him back on his feet. A glance at Marian finds her somewhat recovered from their little revelation – or at least, no longer looking like she's been smacked in the face with a frying pan. But she's glancing between Robin and Regina, clearly she has questions – and she ought to. Lord knows this whole situation is a confusing mess. And quite frankly, she could use a few minutes where she doesn't have to see Robin, or hear Robin, or… any of that. So she adds, "In fact, all three of you should go. You can show Robin your skills."

Robin quirks an eyebrow at her, says, "Really?"

And Regina says, "Really. We'll come get you when the food is ready."

"Now I think you're just trying to get rid of _me_ ," he tells her, but he's dragging himself to his feet anyway, and urging Henry to do the same.

"I am," she tells him, unapologetic now. They have bigger fish to fry, it seems.

Robin marches the boys toward the hallway, stopping in front of her long enough to drop his voice and ask, "You're sure?"

"Yeah," she tells him softly. "I'll handle it. Get out of my kitchen."

He smirks a little, gives her hand a quick squeeze, and then they're alone.

Regina, and the woman who left Robin for robbing Regina's parents.

Regina thinks she should be nervous. Should be anxious, or overwhelmed, but she's been anxious and overwhelmed all day, and the idea of having a while to think about _this_ , about something that isn't Robin and that woman from yesterday, well, she finds it a bit of a relief.

She knows how to talk about Robin and the theft, she knows her thoughts and feelings on that. That's a mess she's well acquainted with. Old news.

So she finds herself not nearly as nervous as she should be – finds herself almost grateful that there's finally another soul in this world who isn't Robin that she can talk openly with about the whole thing.

She abandons the food for now, reaches into the wine rack over the fridge and grabs a bottle of red, makes quick work of uncorking it and grabbing two glasses, and then she brings them to the table, takes the chair next to Marian, and says, "So. I bet you'd like to talk."


	30. Chapter 30

The nerves, as it turns out, are on a bit of a time delay, kicking in around the time she finishes pouring two generous glasses of Cab.

For weeks, their secret has been a heavy burden, lead chains around her neck, weighing her down, yanking at her hopes every time they foolishly try to claw their way up. But now, someone else knows, and she can talk about it. But on the other hand, _someone else knows and she has to talk about it._

Regina finds her middle starting to knot into a confusing tangle of emotions. Nerves, yes, a little bit, and there's also a part of her that feels… almost defiant. Confident. A bit punch-drunk with the impending rush of honesty.

Regina plucks up her glass and takes a deep swallow, waiting Marian out as she mulls over what she wants to ask first.

The question she settles on is unsurprising: "How long have you known?"

"That he was a thief, or that he stole from my parents?" Regina asks, setting her glass down again and twirling it slowly by the base (it's not fidgeting, if it was fidgeting, it would be… faster).

Marian quirks a brow and asks, "The answers are different?"

"They are," Regina confirms with a nod, and Marian lifts her own glass, sits back with it.

"Both, then."

 _Where to start?_ she wonders, and then figures when all else fails, start at the beginning.

So she asks contemplatively, "Did he ever tell you how we met?"

"No," Marian answers slowly, adding, "You're neighbors, you have a son…" as if those things were reason enough. And they probably would have been, eventually. But the true story of what was is oh-so-different.

"He got so drunk on Roland's birthday that the bartender took his keys," Regina tells her, wine glass still slowly spinning. "John was away for the weekend, so he was locked out. Robin broke into our place thinking it was his, and I woke up to him passed out on my sofa."

Marian snorts and shakes her head, takes a pretty generous swallow of wine and then says with a not-so-thin veneer of judgement, "I can't believe you let him step through your front door again."

"Well, he was very polite for a man who'd accidentally committed a B&E and puked in my powder room," Regina shrugs, able to look back and laugh on that now. As offenses go, it's small potatoes compared to everything that came after. "He came back a few days later with an apology gift – a second-hand security system and an offer to install it. While he was doing that, I asked what sent him on his bender. He told me the CliffsNotes version – lent all your savings to a friend, lost his job before he could pay it back, behind on the rent, did a stupid, desperate, illegal thing."

"And you were fine with having a thief in your home? Around your son?" Marian questions, because clearly she hadn't been. "Some man you didn't know, who'd stolen from people?"

"I didn't know it was theft," Regina admits. "All I asked was whether it was a violent crime."

"Because only violent criminals can't be trusted?" Marian asks, her gaze flicking over Regina in a way that makes her feel decidedly judged, nervous kernels popping in her gut as she tries to make this whole thing sound less foolish than it was.

"I never imagined he was someone who would be a fixture in my life, or Henry's." She drums her fingertips against the curve of her wine glass and explains, "Henry used to walk Tuck, before Robin was living with John. I wanted to make sure Robin wasn't too dangerous for him to run over and play with the dog every now and then. If nobody got hurt, that was enough for me. So I didn't ask for more. That was February. I found out that he'd robbed _my parents_ , and when, and what, in June."

Marian shakes her head slightly, scrutinizes Regina again like she'll find the secrets to this insanity somewhere on her surface. But Regina's good at smoothing her surface, and truth be told, she's not always sure that _she_ knows the answers to all of this. So good luck, Marian.

"Why did he finally tell you?" Marian asks, and Regina feels her stomach pinch and twist, swallows down a mouthful of wine in an attempt to unknot the low-grade anxiety she can't shake.

It burns a little in her gut but does nothing for the nerves.

"We'd gone on a date," she explains, wondering just how much Marian knows about her involvement with Robin. "I wanted another. He couldn't live with the secret between us."

Marian's gaze sharpens at that, eyes narrowing, lips pursing on a miffed little, "Hmm." And then she mutters, "Must be nice," into her wine glass before sipping. Regina's not quite sure how to respond to that – Marian's not wrong. Robin had sat on his various transgressions with _her_ for weeks, maybe more. And they'd been together for how long? Regina imagines the idea that some new woman in his life warranted more honesty than the mother of his child is particularly galling. But Marian recovers quickly, says, "I'm guessing you didn't go on that second date."

"We did not," Regina confirms. "But he'd been teaching Henry to play guitar; I didn't want Henry to lose that, so he's been around. The dating, though, that ended. Now we're…" Messy. Complicated. Pathetic. _Over_ , she reminds herself. And _moving on_. Instead, the word she goes with is, "...friends."

Or trying to be, anyway.

"You two don't look particularly _friendly_ tonight," Marian points out, adding, "Something's up between you."

Regina finds herself wishing that she'd been a little less obvious earlier, so this particular embarrassing hiccup could pass unnoticed. It seems her carefully maintained surface has some cracks, after all.

Still, she tries for steady nonchalance, with a dismissive, "Not really," even though, "Sort of." She lifts her wine again and finishes with an, "It's complicated," that she hopes doesn't come across as pathetic.

Marian's, "You're upset with him," doesn't give her much confidence in her performance.

"I'm not," Regina sighs lightly, because she's _not_ upset with him. If anyone, she's upset with herself for letting this all go on so long.

Marian's brows lift a little, a doubtful sort of smirk on her face that Regina finds mildly condescending. "He thinks you are," she says. "He has that annoyed, kicked-puppy look he gets when he's in a fight where he doesn't think he did anything wrong."

"He _didn't_ do anything wrong," Regina tells her; maybe if she keeps saying it, it will start to feel true. "And I've told him so, numerous times today."

"It doesn't look like he believes you," Marian informs her needlessly, earning a little roll of Regina's eyes and a pursed scowl. "And neither does your son."

Regina rolls her eyes and fiddles with her wine again, tells the other woman, "My son has an unfortunate meddling streak. One of the few things he got from his grandmother. He thinks there's something between me and Robin."

"You don't say," Marian drawls, with an expression that Regina thinks roughly translates into _Duh_. And okay, yes, trying to downplay their relationship in the middle of this conversation is a little ridiculous.

But she doesn't _know_ Marian, and this isn't… This isn't the type of thing she usually talks to near-strangers about, especially strangers who'd spent a good number of years dating the man she is so hung up on at the moment. Of course, the fact that Marian _has_ spent so long with Robin makes it a little harder to deny that there's anything at all between them – if Marian knows his kicked-puppy look, there's no doubt she knows his other looks as well, and Regina is not unaware of the way Robin looks at her.

So she tells herself there's not much point in being cagey and concedes, "Henry thinks there's still a chance for something _more_ between me and Robin. Who better for his mom to date than the musician-slash-bartender, with the cool dog, and cool accent, who lives right next door?" Marian rolls her eyes a little, and Regina's lips curve into a wry smile and she shrugs, telling her, "He looks up to him. He doesn't know what Robin did, and neither of us want him to. Kids don't need to know everything."

Marian's brows lift and fall, a silent agreement. Then she says, "You're lucky. Someday, my son will ask why things didn't work out with me and his dad, and I have no idea what I'll tell him. I have a hard enough time explaining it to him now, and he's three. I don't like the idea of lying."

"Would you rather disappoint him?" Regina asks her. "Let him down, let him think that the man he admires is just a common thief?"

"He _is_ a thief," Marian reminds, and, yes, that's true. Regina wonders for a second why she's trying so hard to rationalize this, coming face to face once again with just how far gone she is for this man she has no business caring about. She's spinning her wheels, no hope of forward motion, but she can't help herself. She's already stopped thinking of him as a criminal and started thinking of him as someone whose actions deserve defending.

So she says, "True," and then, "But he's more than that. He's a good man, and a good friend, and a good father. He's more than the stupid man who did a stupid thing. At least he is to me, and he certainly is to Henry."

If Marian can't see past that, well, her loss.

She hears her mother, _You stupid girl_ , in her head, stark and clear like Cora is standing just behind her chair, glaring down her disappointment. The image feels too-real; she wants to shake it off, to shut her eyes for a second and remind herself that Mother is not here and Mother does not know.

But it's a show of weakness she won't allow, not when Marian _is_ in front of her, Marian who _does_ know.

Regina draws in a slow, measured breath, and sips her wine to wash away the bitter spectre of her mother. It's marginally more successful than her attempt to quell her nerves.

Marian sounds less sure, more hesitant, more _curious_ , when she asks, "So what do you tell your son on nights like this? When you don't want to be around the person that he loves so much?"

Regina glances up to meet Marian's gaze again and finds it slightly more open than before – searching, but in a different way – and she wonders if maybe this is just a clumsy attempt at digging for advice under the guise of speculation. They are, after all, both women who've had to lie to their sons to protect this man.

"I tell him that it's private," Regina answers.

"And he accepts that?"

She snorts, shakes her head, and asks, "Did it look like he accepts that? But he doesn't have a choice. Some things aren't his business, and no matter how hard he's tried, he can't get it out of me, or Robin. So he lives with it."

Marian nods at that, takes another thoughtful sip of her wine. Regina mirrors her, lifting her glass as a triumphant whooping shout sounds from across the hall. She smiles, feeling a little rush of pride – Henry must have _finally_ beaten that stupid boss level that he's been working at for days now. It doesn't matter much to _her_ , but she knows it does to him, and that's enough. Still, the little interruption pops the fragile soap bubble of privacy that had wrapped around this conversation, reminding Regina that they're not truly alone, and she should probably keep an ear out for the sounds of them returning, just in case. It wouldn't do for Henry to find out about Robin's transgressions by stumbling into them.

Should probably slow down on the wine, too, considering she hasn't eaten since her admittedly light lunch. She's only on glass number one, but another might make her tipsy if she doesn't eat soon, and it really wouldn't do to get sloppy on a school night, or in front of Henry, or guests. So she keeps her sip small, just a taste of pleasant bitterness spreading over her tongue and then swallowed down.

Marian sets her glass on the table again, shifts a little in her seat toward Regina and asks, "Doesn't it bother you that he knows things are… whatever they are? I think if I had a kid – even my own kid – breathing down my neck while I was trying to work things out with a man, it would drive me nuts."

"Sure, it does," Regina shrugs. "But I can't change the things he _does_ know, and I won't change the things he _doesn't_ know. So, I have to deal with things the way they are. I don't think I have to tell you that it gets complicated when there are kids involved."

"No, you definitely don't," Marian agrees, almost a chuckle. But then she's zeroing in again, pointing out the obvious: "But Henry isn't Robin's. You don't actually have to put up with anything from him. You don't have to play nice, you don't have to make sure that your son doesn't think badly of him no matter what terrible thing he did to you."

"True," Regina concedes, fully aware that she has vastly more choice in this whole thing than Marian had. Still, it's not as if there aren't ties, and maybe this will all be less baffling if she explains them. "Robin is important to Henry. He hasn't had many men in his life, aside from my dad. Henry's father died before he was born."

Marian offers the usual wince of sympathy, the soft, "I'm sorry."

"You didn't crash the car," Regina dismisses, wanting to get past the pleasantries. As dear to her as Daniel is – was – is – he's not the point of this little revelation, and she doesn't want to get caught up in old grief. So she continues, "He has an uncle — his father's brother — who calls every year on Henry's birthday, and Henry's father's birthday, and Christmas. But he lives up in Maine, we're lucky if we see him twice in the same year. He and I…" _Remind each other too much of Daniel_ , she thinks, but that's a little _too_ personal, so instead she opts for, "were never close. And I moved back here after Henry's dad died, so Henry and Liam never had a chance to become close either. He's a link to his dad, but he's not a steady presence in our lives."

She resists the urge to reach for the wine again before she bares this next little wound: "I've had one serious relationship in Henry's life, years ago, when he was younger, and… it ended." She thinks of Graham and a pretty blonde, thinks of Robin and a pretty blonde, and swallows another gulp of wine after all, to drown the acrid resentment the images stir up.

"We parted relatively amicably, but my ex doesn't have much of a relationship with Henry, and I don't have a lot of friends who are men." The wine is calling again, so Regina weaves her fingers together on the tabletop, and tells Marian why she can't make a truly clean break either: "My son adores Robin. Idolizes him. Robin spends time with Henry because he genuinely likes to, and he's patient with him, and lets him help him around the house, or he brings him in to work and lets him hang out with the guys there. Henry loves it, and I think it's good for him. And I think the last few months Robin has needed it, too. He wants to be a good man for my son." That little bit of defiance in her belly has been dulled some by the wine, but it kicks back up to defend, "And yours, too, by the way. But I hope that goes without saying."

Marian scowls a little, and seems to find something very interesting in the depths of her wine.

Which is fine, because Regina isn't finished.

"Henry's getting older; I think he needs that, more and more – a man he can look up to, someone I trust that he can talk to about things he might not want to talk to me about. And Robin wants to be there for him, no matter what may have happened between us. Robin is far from perfect, but he's present, and he's willing, and he's _good_ ," she insists. Because he's a bonehead, but at least he's a bonehead with a sense of decency. "So no, Henry isn't his, and I don't _have_ to put up with him. But it would hurt my son if I cut him out."

Marian's mouth twists into something that looks like it maybe wanted to be a smile, but there's too much pain in it, too much heart. Her voice is steady but there's a vulnerability to it as she muses, "The things we do for our sons."

Regina scoffs a dry little breath in agreement, sitting back and letting herself toy lazily with her wine stem again as she continues, "Robin may have lied, and he may have stolen, and he may have kept secrets from me, and hurt me." She makes a point to pause and add, "Deeply," because he had, he really, truly had, but some things are bigger than that, and this is definitely one of those bigger things. "But I like the way he treats my son – and I like that he always treats _me_ with respect, despite everything. Henry may not understand what's going on between me and Robin, but he observes. And as much as I sometimes wish he was less aware of it all, I take a certain amount of comfort in the fact that he's seeing a man who isn't getting what he wants, but doesn't forget how to treat someone because of it."

She thinks of Sidney, and his constant pushing of her boundaries and her patience, and says, "Not every man is like that. I want Henry to see and admire someone who is. Someone who's confident, but isn't forceful. Who is steadfast, but not relentless. Caring, and protective, but respects my boundaries, and tries to give me space when I ask for it. He's supportive, he's kind..."

It rips her up a little to lend voice to all the reasons she wants him around so badly, all the things he does for her that she has to walk away from. Should already have walked away from. It carves into her guts and leaves an empty little hole that she's going to have to patch over yet again. So she stops, and finishes with, "Say what you want about Robin, but he treats women well, and that's something I want my son to see. I can lead by example how to be a good person, but I can't be the example for how to be a good _man_. Robin, on the other hand…"

"He has a chivalrous streak," Marian agrees, a little bittersweet. More bitter than sweet, Regina thinks, readying herself for the inevitable _but_. "He always has. He was a very good man. Which is why it was so shocking when he went behind my back, stole from me, broke the law and stole from someone else, and lied to me about it."

Ah, there it is.

"He risked our whole life because he couldn't be honest with me," Marian says, shaking her head. She looks a little hurt, a little baffled, and it occurs to Regina that maybe she's not the only one who's glad to finally be able to _talk_ to someone about all of this. "He could have talked to me about giving Will a loan; he didn't. He could have come to me when we were broke, and admitted it all then, and we could have tried to find some other way to make ends meet; he didn't. He was too proud, and too embarrassed, and too fucked by his own actions to be honest with me."

That flicker of appreciation has evaporated in a flame of anger; Regina can't say she blames her. Not really. There are moments when she feels the burn of his betrayal again like it's fresh, too.

"He'd rather risk getting thrown in jail than admit he made a mistake. But hey," Marian finishes bitterly, lifting her glass in a little toast, "At least he treats women with respect."

It feels like a dig – certainly at Robin, but at her, too, and Regina finds herself pursing her lips, pressing them together to keep from saying something that will send this whole conversation from civil-with-a-heavy-dose-of-honesty to outright hostility. Because all of that, those things, they aren't who Robin is, at least not any more. She knows that. She _knows_ that.

So she tells Marian, "He learned from that mistake. From all of them."

"Did he?" she questions. "He still lied to you."

"Yes, he did lie to me," Regina concedes, "And I have to believe he learned from that, too. He's lied to both of us, and he's betrayed us, and he's broken the law, and he's hurt our families. And he didn't go to jail, but he didn't get away with it, either. There were repercussions. He lost you, he's had to fight for Roland—"

"He sees our son almost more than I do," Marian interrupts, and Regina watches her temper tick up, Marian's back straightening as her hackles rise, one hand restlessly shifting her glass as she shakes her head and scoffs, "I am so sick of him acting like I'm punishing him, like I am keeping him from Roland. He gets him for three days straight – three days that he doesn't work, mind you. I get him for breakfast and bedtime. I would kill for a Saturday with my son, to take a Mommy and Me class, or go to the park, or, hell, even just watch Saturday morning cartoons. But I don't get those, because on _my_ days off, Roland is with his father. Because those are _his_ days off, and it's not like he can take him during the week."

The vehemence of Marian's outburst takes Regina by surprise, but she supposes it shouldn't – there's nothing more fierce than a mother. The words themselves, though, are like a dunk in cold water. A sudden snap to awareness. She's so used to hearing Robin's side of things, the never-enough-time side of things, that she's never really thought of the whole situation from the other perspective.

But she supposes Marian is probably right… Robin has Roland on the weekend. Every weekend. Which leaves the weekdays for Marian. Who works. Breakfasts and bedtime, just like she said.

Regina thinks of the stretch of days between Monday and Friday, of how much she looks forward to lazy weekends around the house. Even if they don't _do_ anything, just being in the house with Henry there is a relief after a long week of work.

"I didn't think of it that way," Regina says carefully, evenly, and Marian lets out a little snort of derision.

"No, of course you didn't, because you've only ever had to see things from his side," Marian shoots back, although some of her heat is fizzling. "Which is fine, because you're a part of his life, not mine, but if you're going to sit back and try to get sympathy for him after all the shit he pulled and the way he ruined our life together—"

"He's not the one who ended your relationship," Regina reminds, perhaps an ill-advised remark considering the way Marian's jaw ticks.

"Well, I couldn't just forgive him," she says. "I certainly couldn't _trust_ him. Don't get me wrong, I knew that he had a checkered past. I knew he had his juvenile delinquent phase. But I figured he grew out of that somewhere around the time he became a father and a supposedly responsible adult."

"He made a mistake—"

"He _stole from me_ and _broke the law_ ," Marian tells her, every word bitten off and clipped. "He is not some innocent victim to my terrible vindictiveness."

"I never said he was," Regina explains calmly. "And I understand why you were angry. I've understood since the moment he told me why he wasn't allowed to see his son. But I've gotten to know him in the meantime, and what I can't figure out now is why you're so hesitant to remember who he was, and to let him start earning your trust back. You loved him once; you know he's not a terrible person, or a dangerous one, despite what he did. And he's not a bad father, so what is it?"

"He works nights," Marian answers plainly. "I don't think you're lobbying for Robin and I to be better friends, or make up," she continues and Regina offers a conciliatory brow lift in confirmation. That's not what she wants, no. "So I can only imagine you're hoping you can convince me to give him more flexibility with Roland, but my hands are pretty much tied there. He wants to take him out of daycare during the week, but for what? And when? Don't try to tell me that man is up before ten, not if he's closing the night before; I know him better than that. And he has to be at the bar in the afternoon, right? So what am I supposed to be giving him that I'm not already? An hour to pull our son out of his routine, just so Robin can, what? Take him to lunch?" Marian shakes her head, shifts restlessly in her seat, palpable frustration radiating from her as she pokes holes in Regina's righteous indignation. "I trust Robin to keep Roland safe; if I didn't, I wouldn't be giving up my weekends with my son so he can see his dad. But all the trust in the world wouldn't change the logistics."

She's right. Regina knows she's right, but also knows that Robin doesn't see it this way. That he never has. All he sees is the days without Roland in his life.

So she answers Marian with, "Then maybe you should try giving him perspective. Because I promise you, it has never crossed his mind that he's been getting anything even close to a better deal in this arrangement than you are."

"That's because he's selfish," Marian shoots back. "And he never used to be. The man I fell for thought of people other than himself. I don't know when that changed – I want to say it was the day he decided to run our savings into the ground for Will, but I bet he'd say that _was_ thinking of other people. He just wasn't thinking of me."

"Which explains why you left him, but it doesn't explain why you're so hesitant to give him a chance to show he's changed," Regina argues. "And he _has_ – The Robin Locksley I know is far from a selfish man."

Marian's lips purse a little, her tongue swiping out over them, and she reaches for the wine again and tops them both off. This particular turn of conversation has them both on edge, the tension in the room gone thick and heavy. And maybe much of Marian's irritation is justified, but Regina still stands by most of what she's said. Or rather, she doesn't regret saying it. The conversation has been enlightening, to say the very least.

Once they're both in possession of full glasses again, Marian says, "You can't figure out why I'm so hesitant to trust him. I can't figure out why you're not _more_ hesitant."

"I have my son to think about," Regina answers simply. "He comes first."

Marian takes a breath and says, "So do I. And so does mine."

For a moment, they both just sit there, silent and staring. Not quite a showdown, nothing that dramatic, but they obviously have very different views of the situation. And Regina doesn't think either of them is likely to budge enough to truly meet in the middle, so she offers a careful, but not overly kind, "Clearly, we see things differently," and scoots back from the table, intent on making those tacos before the chicken gets warm, or the boys finish with Petetronic, or they end up with any other excuse to have everyone here in the house for even longer.

When she stands, her knees feel springy, a little tipsy, and she makes a note to snack on some of the peppers after she cuts them just to put something in her belly.

She feels Marian's gaze on her as she answers, "Clearly." She pauses for a second and Regina glances back to find her sipping her wine and scrutinizing again. Regina turns back to fish out a cutting board and start on the chicken, and Marian surprises her with, "I think you're being naive about Robin, but… I'm glad you are. You seem smart, you have a nice home, you're very… put together. You seem like a good influence on him." Regina is peeling the plastic off the chicken breasts as Marian mutters, "God knows he could use a few of those," and she shakes her head a little, finds herself mildly offended on Robin's behalf. "At the very least, I'm pretty sure you're a good mom, and someone who will look after my son in a way that I like. Roland needs someone in his life who believes in vegetables other than ketchup."

Irritated or not, Regina snorts a little. Robin does have a somewhat dubious measure for what constitutes proper nutrition, she can't deny that. Still, "He might think potatoes are a vegetable, or mac and cheese is a full meal, but Robin is trying. And he doesn't need me around to know how to look after your son. Give him a little bit of grace."

Marian takes a breath at that, gives a little nod, and admits, "It's just hard when they're not with you. Robin was always… sort of the fun parent. He was loving, and he liked to play, and handle bath time, and bedtime and all that, but he's never been great at telling Roland no, or disciplining him when it's necessary. And I don't think that's gotten any better since we split. I don't want him to turn into a little monster because his dad is a pushover. I know he can take care of him, but that doesn't mean he couldn't use some better examples. I respected the way you dealt with Roland when he got here tonight, and I respect the way you dealt with your own son. Especially when you thought you were wrong."

That gives Regina pause, has her slowing as she settles the chicken on the cutting board, turning to give Marian a little smile of appreciative acknowledgement before she turns back to her task, and explains, "I grew up in a strict home. My family was… well-off, as I'm sure you know. Mother was – still is – very concerned with keeping up appearances, and behaving acceptably in front of others. Unfortunately, she also has a mean streak." Knife in hand, she begins to cube, focuses on the task so she doesn't fret over baring these particular wounds to this woman she barely knows. "I remember, vividly, what it was like to be scolded in front of people. To be embarrassed, on purpose. It was terrible. I don't ever want to be like her. But she wasn't wrong about everything. My upbringing was unpleasant much of the time, but it gave me the tools to be successful. I've tried to keep the good, and not emulate the bad."

She piles cubes of chicken on one side of the board, starts on the second breast, explaining, "And I try to be fair, which means that in my house, Roland follows my rules, just like Henry. And it means that when I'm wrong, my son gets the apologies I never did." She's grateful that her back is turned, that she doesn't have to meet Marian's gaze to admit, "I'd have given anything for her to _see_ that she hurt me, much less apologize for it. My son won't ever have to feel that way."

"That's admirable," Marian tells her, and then admits, "My father was a real piece of work – when he was even around. I always told myself I would never end up with a man like him. Robin told me once, after we split, that I'd been treating him like he was my dad."

It's a confession meant to put them on even footing, something weighty and personal, and Regina sets down her knife for a moment to turn and give its due attention.

She tilts her head at Marian and asks, "Were you?"

Marian's answer is a grimacing little smile, her brows shifting, one hand scooping up her wine and bringing it nearly to her lips before she mutters, "It's possible." She takes a sips and continues, "My dad was in and out of jail when I was young. I don't suppose you know what it's like to go visit a parent in jail?"

Regina stops short of snarking that she wishes she'd had the opportunity, the image of Cora locked up in an orange jumpsuit and far out of Regina's daily life particularly satisfying at the moment. It's a fantasy that is neither appropriate, nor fair to the other party to this conversation, so she keeps it to herself and simply says, "No, I don't."

"It's not particularly fun," Marian tells her. "And it's not something I would ever want for Roland. Robin _knows_ that, and he still did what he did."

Once again, Regina finds herself grasping for the right thing to say and coming up empty.

She's saved from having to come up with an answer by Henry barreling back into the room at far more speed than is necessary for a trip across the hall. Regina and Marian both startle a little, thrown by being interrupted in the middle of such an intimate conversation.

Henry skids to a stop, tugging open the fridge door and announcing, "I beat Pete! And Robin wants to know if we have another beer, and I wanted another ginger ale."

"Whatever was in the fridge is all that's left of the beer," Regina informs him, before giving permission for another drink and turning back to her chicken.

"You haven't even _started_ yet?" Henry asks, his face drawn into a disappointed scowl when Regina glances up.

"We've been talking," Regina explains.

"Yeah, about secret stuff that I don't get to know," he gripes.

"Exactly," Regina smirks, telling him, "Give us another twenty minutes."

"Twenty minutes?" he groans, and she shakes her head.

"I don't know why you're bellyaching so much," she says to him as he finishes refilling his glass, and another, she notices, imagining it must be for Robin. "You don't usually eat dinner until after your lesson anyway."

She doesn't miss the momentary look of mischief on his face, or the put-upon innocence in his voice as he says, "I'm just looking forward to us all having dinner together. Like a family."

Ah. Right. It's been awhile since a proper Monday night dinner with Robin, and while she imagines Henry doesn't appreciate the awkwardness of his ex-girlfriend here as a fifth wheel, she can no doubt imagine where his head is going with this.

But she's not going to call him out on it, not now, in front of Marian, so she simply says, "We'll call you when we're ready for you," and watches him leave, glasses in hand.

She glances at the clock and groans internally – it's already past seven, but then again, _it's only just a bit past seven_. It feels later. She feels tired, taxed from her day, and her riotous emotions, and the last little while with Marian.

So when Marian speaks up from the table, asking again, "Are you sure I'm not allowed to help you cook? I know my way around a knife," Regina decides that a little help wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

She's finished with the chicken, so she sets the knife in the sink to clean later, moving to wash her hands as she concedes, "I suppose you could cut some bell peppers."

The conversation shifts after that, stays on safer topics like raising young boys, and growing up in the Baltimore area, and by the time the boys come wandering back in, they've left the tension of too-honest conversation behind them.

**.::.**

Robin waits to return until he can smell the dinner cooking, and only sends Henry in that one time to refresh their drinks and make sure that things in the kitchen haven't gone entirely into the shitter. He wants to be in there, wants to be a part of this conversation, but he trusts them, too, and frankly, a little break from Regina's mysterious mood is not unwelcome.

Once the whole place begins to smell like spiced meat, though, all bets are off.

They've had time to talk, and time to cook, and, Robin hopes, some time for Regina's irritation with him to mellow out to a place where she's at least willing to be bloody honest about it for a few minutes.

She's smiling through the roll of her eyes as they walk back into the kitchen, half-hearted in her scolding of, "I thought we said we'd come get you."

And she scoops Roland up onto her hip again when he laments, "We're _hungry_."

All good signs.

"It's almost finished, munchkin," Marian assures, quickly shifting a tortilla from a pan on the stove to a towel-covered plate nearby.

Good. Almost finished is good. It means Marian can handle the rest of it while he pulls Regina aside and tries again to fish the source of her bad mood out of her in private.

He reaches for his son, plucks him from Regina's hip (she scowls a little at Robin, but lets Roland go willingly) and gives him one playful toss into the air, grinning as his son giggles and urges, "Again!"

"One more," he agrees, sending Roland flying again and then swinging him back down onto his feet as he cackles. And then he wastes no time, telling his son, "Why don't you and Henry help your Mum, and set the table while I talk to Regina for a minute."

Robin watches her tense, one hand lifting to tuck her hair back behind her ear, and there's that too-polite distance to her voice again when she says, "Oh, they don't need to do that. I thought we'd just build everything at the counter and carry over to the table. No setting necessary."

She smiles as she says it, and then she looks away, needlessly rearranging taco toppings on the cutting board.

Robin exhales heavily, frustrated. So much for quick and easy.

He stares at her back, and tries not to sound angry or desperate when he tries again with a quiet, "Regina, please. Two minutes."

Her shoulders lift and fall on a deep breath, and then he catches sight of Marian, half-turning toward Regina and giving her a sly, pointed, "Maybe you should give him some grace."

Robin frowns, not exactly sure what she means by that, but he watches Regina turn to scowl at her, planting a hand on the countertop as she does. Whatever it means, Regina certainly understands it – is annoyed over it, by all appearances, but understands it.

Marian gives her shoulders a little shrug as if to say _It's up to you_.

And bless her, it actually works. Regina blows out a breath, shakes her head, and turns to tell Henry, "Get the plates down, and pull out the company napkins – the red ones, not the fancy ones. And grab the ginger ale from the pantry and put it in the fridge, alright?"

Henry nods, and Regina manages to head for the hall without so much as a glance at Robin.

He's not entirely sure what just transpired, but Robin mouths a quick "Thank you" to Marian and follows after Regina. He expects her to stop in the hall, or at least the den, but she bypasses both, stalks all the way down the rest of the hall to the laundry room and flicks the light on, waits for him to follow behind her. He shuts the door behind them, figuring she wants the privacy and then turns to face her.

If he didn't know her better, he'd say she was all bluster, with her crossed arms and scowling lips, and her chin tipped up a little as she asks him tersely, "What's up?"

But her armor never quite covers her eyes, and they're stormy and unsure.

"That's what I was going to ask you," he says, putting a little bit of kind pleading into his voice when he asks her again, "What's wrong? And don't say nothing; I know you better."

Her eyes drop to his chin for a second, her lips pressing together hard, eyes squinting, as if she's trying to decide just what yarn to spin, and if she lies to him again, he's just not sure what he'll do. Bite down a rising swell of anger, for starters.

But when she speaks, he thinks it's the truth: "Sometimes caring about you, being friends with you, hurts. I want things I can't have, and it makes me angry. And it hurts. And when it hurts, I don't want you in my face reminding me of that. But here you are, with your son, and your ex, in my house, when I just want a few days to be left alone and lick my wounds."

Oh. Well, then. That's… She meets his gaze, turbulent brown on slightly wounded blue, and he feels like a jerk for coming here tonight. For being in her face when she'd rather he not, and he could say he didn't know, but he did. He knew she didn't want to see him, that she'd been blowing him off all day, and he manipulated his way in anyway. Used dimples, and curls, and another set of big brown eyes, and now here they are.

"I almost cancelled tonight," she confesses, fingers squeezing against her own biceps. "I didn't want to see you, and I didn't want to see Roland, feeling the way I feel right now. But at the same time… I love that kid. And I promised him tacos, and I didn't want to disappoint him."

She smiles then, finally, a soft little thing that makes all that tense anger leach away a bit.

"But that doesn't mean I wanted to play hostess to you and your ex. To have to talk to her about all the things that we just had to talk about." Her shoulders lift, and fall, and her voice goes a little thin when she finishes with, "Especially when I didn't want to think about you at all."

Fuck.

He fucked up.

He runs a hand through his hair and sighs, and tells her, "I'm sorry. I didn't realize I was… crowding you."

"You didn't do anything wrong," she tells him, but it's weak, and he doesn't buy it. Especially when she adds a mildly suspicious, "Unless you came over tonight just hoping to be let in so you could badger me into telling you this."

His grimace tells her all she needs to know, apparently. Has her rolling her eyes and sighing.

"Well, that's lovely," she mutters, shaking her head. "Using your son to get in the door."

"Roland really did want tacos," he insists. "He wailed about it for a good five minutes, but… He's three, he doesn't have to get his way. I hoped that if we came over, I could talk to you. I knew something was wrong. I hate when you're angry with me."

"I'm not angry with _you_ ," she tells him. "I'm angry with me. And… everything. I was expecting tacos with Roland, and then if I was lucky, a quiet night. Maybe a bath, or a book. Not tacos for five and a round of true confessions with a stranger."

"I'm sorry," he says again. "I shouldn't have left you alone for that—"

"Oh, yes, you should have," she tells him, with a certainty that has unease swirling in his gut. "We had a good talk. It would have been very different with you there."

"Well, that's terrifying," he mutters, and she laughs – actually laughs. A little chuckle that lingers into a smile, her teeth digging into her lip for a moment in a way that makes him itch to kiss her.

He shoves his hands in his pockets to keep them to himself.

"It's really not," she assures. "I may not want you here tonight, but I hope you know I wouldn't… throw you under the bus with her. You're my friend, even when it hurts, and I like to think I'm loyal."

Robin presses his hands even deeper into his pockets if that's possible, and then decides, fuck it, he'll be polite about it, but he needs to touch her for just a second. He surrenders one hand from the depths, reaches out and tangles his fingers with hers for a quick squeeze, and says, "Thank you. Anything I need to talk to her about, or is it all sorted?"

Regina's fingers stay curled with his, her thumb toying with his knuckle as she seems to consider her answer, lips pursing slightly before she says, "You should talk to her about Roland. And you should listen to her. I think… you might be surprised by what she has to say."

Robin scoffs out a breath, says, "Yeah, I'll bet," and draws his hand back to the safety of his pocket.

"I mean it," Regina tells him. "I don't think her reservations are what you think they are. They certainly weren't what I thought. Talk to her. Really talk, and really listen."

Robin can't help poking at her a little, one corner of his mouth pulling up into a smirk as he points out, "Says the woman who refused to talk to me all night."

"Well, you know what, I'm glad I finally did," she says, her eyes lighting a bit with challenge. He'll take the loss if it means she's not looking at him anymore like she's been kicked and he's the one who'd worn the boot. "I do feel a little better with it out in the open."

"Fine," he sighs. "I'll talk to her about our son. And she can beat me up some more over how shit of a person I am."

"Talk to her," Regina repeats, slowly. "With an open mind. Ask her to do the same."

"If you say so," he mutters. And then, "Do you want me to go? Henry's lesson is fairly shot at this point; I could go home, you guys can eat. I don't want to cause you any more grief."

"No, don't be silly," she insists with a shake of her head. "The damage is already done, and there's no way to explain you leaving that won't result in Henry pestering me about it for the rest of the night, if not the week. I can deal with hurt feelings for an evening."

"I'm not sure I can deal with hurting your feelings for an evening," he confesses, watching her smile bloom and then wilt almost immediately, her gaze skating off to the side to avoid his while she takes a careful breath.

Fuck. Not helping, Robin.

He clears his throat, and says, "Let's get back in there. We'll eat some tacos, and we'll get out of your hair. You might yet get a quiet night with a book."

Her chuckle in response doesn't carry much punch, but comes with a nod and a brief return of that smile. Could be worse.

"One can only hope."

**.::.**

Robin spends dinner focused on the boys, trying to give Regina as wide of a berth as he can manage while sitting two chairs down from her. He feels like a git, wishes he'd not been so bloody selfish and just taken her words at face value, true or not.

She'd have had the quiet night she'd wanted, and he'd have taught Henry some more Stones on the electric, perhaps, and Marian would still have been in the dark about just how fucked up his relationship is with the neighbor.

And now, apparently, he ought to talk to her about their son. It's not a conversation he's looking forward to, despite Regina's encouragement, and so Robin waits to say anything to Marian until they've left the house for the night.

And then he waits some more, staying tight-lipped about it while they get Roland buckled in, and then deciding that maybe it's better suited for a time and place other than standing on the curb with Roland there, kicking his feet absently and, if Robin's not mistaken, continuing to compose the song about his love of tacos that he'd been improvising as they'd left.

As first meetings between ex-girlfriends and women you've horribly betrayed and then fallen stupidly in love with go, he thinks this one could have been much worse. He doesn't want to sully it with an argument about splitting time.

Whatever conversation the two of them had had without him seemed to have gone well enough, and more than once during dinner he'd caught Marian staring at him with the same look she used to wear when she was trying to workout the Sunday morning Sudoku while he read the funny pages to Roland.

He's not sure if it's definitely a good thing, but doesn't think it's necessarily a bad thing, either. Can't get a good read on her. But he thinks, overall, this impromptu meeting went well. Which is good, because he's out a $50 lesson fee because of it, and managed to stomp all over Regina's feelings in the process.

So he waves goodbye to Roland in his car seat (yes, that is definitely still "Taco Taco" that he's singing to himself), closes the door gently, and turns to say goodnight to Marian.

Instead, he gets walloped with an overly blunt, "Are you sleeping with her?"

Robin blinks, his jaw falling open slightly and letting loose a dumb, "What?" and then a proper, "No, what gave you that idea?"

Marian shrugs and crosses her arms over her chest, reasoning, "You're not together, but you're fighting like you are, and she thinks very highly of you." That piques his interest, has him wondering just what Regina had said about him, but Marian doesn't give him any time to dwell on it, continuing with, "And I can tell you feel the same way about her."

It's not quite accusatory, but it's not particularly kind either, and Robin wonders where exactly she's coming from with this. It occurs to him that she might be jealous of the hot neighbor who "thinks highly" of him, and fights like they're fucking, and makes predictably delicious tacos, and settles their son on her hip like he belongs there. And if she is, well, serves her fucking right. She's the one who ended things, isn't she?

And he's glad of it now, but there's a petty little part of him that hopes that's it. Jealousy. Good. Let her be jealous.

Still, he dismisses the whole sleeping together thing, tells her, "We're just friends," and tacks on a tart, "Not that it's really any of your business anymore, is it?"

Her expression puckers, sours as she admits, "No. It's not. I just don't want Roland to get attached to someone you're going to break up with. And he's clearly very attached."

Ah. That. Well that's… reasonable. And more reasonable than jealousy, probably.

"We're not together," Robin tells her, again. "And trust me, if we made it through what I did to her parents and we're still friends, I don't think we have to worry about Roland losing someone he cares about."

He's got her there; she gives her usual reluctant nod and says, "I suppose you're right."

And then they're just standing there, Robin with his hands stuffed into his back pockets, Marian with her arms tightly crossed.

He draws a breath to say goodnight, intent on heading back to his place and going over some of the songs he's supposed to play with Tink next weekend, but Marian beats him to the punch with a slightly forced, "Look, um…" She scowls a little, and then continues, "I trust you with Roland. I don't always trust your judgement with other things, and falling for the neighbor whose parents you robbed is spectacularly dumb, but I'm guessing you've already figured that out. When it comes to our son, though, I do trust you. You're… a good father. I know that."

Well, that was… unexpected.

All Robin can think of to say is, "Oh," and then, "Thanks. You're a good mum." And since she brought it up anyway, he tells her, "Regina said I should talk to you. About Roland. She thought I might be surprised by what you had to say."

Marian lets out this laugh, or a scoff, somewhere in between, shaking her head and telling him, "Yeah, I'm sure you would be, if you'd actually take the time to listen without jumping on me."

Robin lifts his brows, crosses his arms over his chest and musters the determination to be the bigger person at all costs, daring her, "Try me."

Her brows rise too, her expression sliding toward doubt, but she shrugs and says, "Alright," and then chucks all that determination out the window by suggesting, "You see Roland more than I do."

"That's crap," he tells her vehemently. How dare she try to—

"No, Robin, it's not," she insists. "You get him all weekend, all day, for three days. I don't get him all day _ever_."

"You have him the whole bloody week!"

" _Daycare_ has him the whole 'bloody' week," she counters. "I get him from six to eight, mornings and evenings, and that's it."

"Well, that's—" Huh. That's…. huh. Robin stuffs his hands back in his pockets, shifts his shoulders a little as he does the mental math himself and comes up with the same figures.

"And I know you say that you can be daycare," Marian is still going, "but I'd have to drop him here no later than eight, and you'd still have to bring him into daycare for the afternoons. You'd never sleep, he'd be missing half the day all the time, and he _likes_ it there. I'm tired of being made out to be the bad guy here when I'm being more than fair. You see him more than—"

"Alright," he cuts her off, blowing out a breath and starting to feel a bit like an arse. "Alright, you're right. It just… doesn't _feel_ like that much time, is all."

"Believe me, I know," she shoots back dryly, and Robin winces a little.

"Why didn't you say something sooner?"

"How would you have reacted?" she asks him, all challenge.

"Probably like a git," Robin concedes, because if she'd come at him any other time and tried to take a weekend day, he'd probably have done his nut over it. But aside from the edge of temper she's riding, she's actually not being… totally unreasonable. Or really, unreasonable at all, he supposes. And Regina was right, he's definitely surprised by her side of things.

"Probably, yeah," Marian agrees, sucking in a breath and then blowing it out, and saying, "But if you want to take him for a weekday morning every once in a while – and I mean a full morning, not pick him up at daycare, pick him up at _home_ , before I leave for work – we can maybe work that out."

It's a good offer, and all things considered probably more than fair. In fact, it's an offer for more time when he already has the _most_ time, apparently. So "fair" is probably an understatement.

And now she's standing there expectantly, waiting for a reaction from him and looking not entirely sure what it might be, so he supposes he ought to give back, too. Compromise is supposed to work both ways, right?

"What if… What if we shifted everything a bit?" he suggests, watching her go guarded in response.

"Shifted everything how?" she questions dubiously.

"I could pick him up Saturday after lunch," Robin offers with a little shrug, then pushes tentatively on with, "and drop him at daycare Tuesday afternoon. I wouldn't lose any time, and you'd get Saturday mornings with him – and he gets up with the damn sun so that's a good half a day solid."

Marian mulls it over, nodding slowly, and saying, "That could work. I'd prefer the whole day, but—"

"That's shaving time off, that's not—"

"I know," Marian waves away. "I know, I knew you'd say that. Will you throw a fit if I ask you to bring him to Monday afternoon daycare?" she asks carefully. "He told me on Tuesday that he was sad he missed show and tell day."

Shit.

He hadn't thought of that when he'd asked for Mondays.

"Just for the afternoon?" he asks, and Marian reassures him that, yes, just for the afternoon. He doesn't love the idea, but at least for the next little while, it means he'd have time to rehearse with Tink, or time to run some errands without having to corral an active toddler. And Roland usually takes a nap mid-afternoon anyway; he can do that just as easily during naptime at daycare as he can at home.

So alright, fine, "Yeah, I can do that. And it's alright if I take him another morning during the week as long as I clear it with you?"

"Within reason," she reminds. "And with advanced notice. But yes. You're his father, and you deserve to see your son."

It's like they've entered some sort of bizarro world – or rather, like they've finally returned from one, because for the first time in months, he feels like he's looking at _Marian_ again. Or maybe like she's looking at _him_ , and not some deadbeat loser he apparently woke up as one morning.

He can't help asking, "What did Regina say to you?"

He doesn't really expect an answer, but she surprises him with one anyway, telling him, "She reminded me of some of your better qualities, and was pretty adamant that you'd paid enough for what you did, and that you'd learned from it. I don't know if that's true or not, but I know you've been trying to turn things around, for Roland."

Not that he's one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but, "I told you all those things, too. You didn't budge much."

"I gave you Mondays," she reminds, and then, "And it's different coming from someone else, I guess. Are you going to complain?

"No. Definitely not."

"Didn't think so," she smirks, and then she takes a deep breath in and out, ready to wrap this up, no doubt. "I'll bring him by Saturday, after lunch."

"Not this week," Robin insists, shaking his head. "It's Henry's birthday party on Saturday; I should pick him up by noon at the very latest. But starting next week, we can do mid-afternoon, absolutely."

"Okay," Marian agrees, frowning and asking, "Does he need a gift for this party?"

 _Does he need a gift for this party?_ What kind of stupid question…

"No, he does not," Robin tells Marian, "because I already bought one. I'm not a complete numpty, you know."

Marian ignores the second comment, if you can count a roll of her eyes as ignoring, and clarifies, "I will bring him Saturday morning this week, with his things, and—"

"No more things," Robin interrupts, because, hell, if they're rearranging things, they might as well do it all. "Leave stuff here for him. It's been six months and he comes here every weekend like he's traveling. I want him to have things here, at his Dad's house. His other house."

Her shoulders shift a little, her lips pursing, and ah, here's the Marian he's come to know and resent.

"It's John's house. If this is permanent, and you want things to be more permanent for Roland, maybe you should start with a bed of his own," she counters, and, okay, alright. Point made. Roland usually sleeps on the empty half of Robin's bed, and it's been working just fine, but it's not a permanent solution. He can admit that much.

"I'll get one by Friday," he assures her. "He'll have one for the weekend, if you'll pack some of his stuffed toys, and shorts and—"

"You know, _you_ could always buy him clothes and toys," Marian says pointedly.

He's tempted to respond with, _Isn't that what the hundred dollars a week I send you is for now?_ but in the interest of their newfound civility, he manages to restrain himself. Instead, he says, "I _have_ bought him a few things for my place, but he can't wear the same three shirts every weekend, can he? And, as you pointed out, he's spending nearly half a week here now— including two daycare days, if I bring him on Mondays—so it makes sense that half his clothes be here." And just in case she needs the deal sweetened a bit, he throws in, "It would mean less laundry for you."

That argument seems to work, a little bit, but she doesn't look any more pleased than he feels over the way they're edging toward bickering, so she actually bloody gives in for once (that's not fair, she's given quite a lot today, and more in the past few months than he'd realized, it seems), and says, "Fine. Get a bed for him by Friday, and I will have a bunch of his things packed when you come to get him. In fact, why don't you get him on Friday this week. If you want to bring a bunch of his stuff over from my place, the evening will be easier anyway. Less rushed. Come for dinner, and maybe the two of you can decide which stuffed animals he wants to keep with you? If I ask him during the week, he'll just change his mind six times."

Robin smirks, nods. "Sounds about right. And yeah, that's fine. I can pick up dinner, if you want. I'm off Fridays, I have all day. I can get him from daycare in the afternoon, pick something up on the way back to the apartment."

"Sure," Marian nods. "That'd be good."

And just like that, they've managed to have a civil conversation about Roland's custody that seems to have satisfied them both. What a novel concept.

They've run dry on negotiations, and Roland has run out of verses about tacos, it seems, or (more likely) just worn himself out and nodded off in the car seat.

So Robin says his goodnights, and watches them drive off.

And then he heads back for his own house, wondering just how exactly he's going to rearrange his room in order to fit a toddler bed and an assortment of stuffed animals.


	31. Chapter 31

"So," Tink begins as she folds her legs up beneath her on a blanket in the park, mid-morning on Wednesday. "What did you write for me?"

Robin snorts a little, and tells her, "Nothing worth sharing."

They're rehearsing today, running through her usual set again, going over some of the covers they wanted to do, and trying to write something original. She'd asked on Sunday about his music before, back when he could actually claim to be a productive musician instead of the blocked-up hack he's become, and he'd played her a few things. It had been a mistake – she'd decided then and there that he should write again, immediately, that they should write something together, even, to play at their upcoming gig.

Which would be all well and good if Robin was at all capable of actually finishing a bloody song, but so far this summer all he's managed is self-indulgent, trite scraps that amount to nothing. The pressure of having to produce for someone new, even someone as disarming and brightly encouraging as Tink, isn't helping.

It had been her idea to come here, to the park. The heat has finally ebbed off into the low 80s, so she'd wanted to work outdoors, claiming the fresh air would help get their creative juices flowing. It's a weekday, so there aren't as many kids around, even with school not yet in session. Most of the neighborhood kids are safely tucked away in daycare, or preschool, or summer camp, or, if they're lucky, parked in front of the telly for as much time as they can manage before the summer ends.

He spares a thought for Henry, wondering what he's doing with himself today. He hasn't seen him yet, although he doesn't usually in the mornings. He usually leaves Robin alone until at least eleven, unless he catches sight of him taking Tuck to pop a squat in the yard and decides Robin's up enough for company.

But Tuck's with them in the park today – maybe a foolish plan if they want to get anything done, but it's the park, and he's a dog, and Tink had said it would be fine. That her uninjured hand was perfectly capable of tossing a tennis ball thankyouverymuch, and it's not like she can play anyway.

So here they are, sitting beneath his and Regina's tree on a sunny day, Robin with his guitar, Tink with a ratty old tennis ball, and Tuck with a quivering amount of excitement as he waits for her to let it fly. Robin waits, too, watches her give it a respectable throw that Tuck goes tearing after before she tells him, "I'm sure that's not true," and reaches for his composition notebooks before he can stop her, too busy adjusting his E string (it had sounded just a little flat as he plucked at it).

"It is," he assures as she opens one to a page of meaningless chicken scratch. Lyrics he'd written and hated and drawn stark graphite lines through. "There's nothing there, just… scribbles. My week hasn't exactly been a prime environment for writing. I feel like shit."

"Physically ill or emotional mess?" she asks, and Robin's brows lift a little.

 _Emotional mess_ isn't a term he'd particularly like to apply to himself – a bit too dramatic – so he sidesteps both her options and says, "I was a git, and hurt someone I care about."

"Regina," Tink guesses, and Robin nods, and sighs.

"And I can't fix it, because she doesn't want to see me right now."

Tuck returns, then, dropping his ball right next to Tink's knee, tail wagging expectantly as she scoops it up from the grass. Robin fiddles absently with his strings as she pitches it away again, strumming through a quick three-chord progression to channel a little of his frustration and self-loathing.

"What'd you do?"

"Nothing," Robin sighs. "Existed. Came by when I shouldn't have, and weaseled my way into her home for an evening instead of just leaving well enough alone."

Tink "Hmm"s and eyes him skeptically, says, "Sounds like it was a perfect week for writing, if you ask me."

Robin snorts. "Maybe for you, but I think I do better when I don't want to sulk around the house all day and throw myself a little pity party with my friends Sam and Jack."

Her shoulders (tan, and bare, and freckle-dusted, he notices today) shrug nonchalantly, as she says, "Well, this isn't your house, and I'm fresh out of beer and whiskey, so let's get to it."

That's about the point that Robin realizes Nelly Tinkerman isn't likely to take no for an answer when she's set her mind to something.

"Why don't we just go over the set list again," he suggests, watching her flip idly through the pages of his notebook and skim his attempts at productivity – something that makes Robin feel a surge of self-conscious discomfort.

"Nope," she declares, drawing out the N and popping the P. "I have complete confidence that you'll have everything performance-ready by next week, I'm already coming over again on Saturday afternoon to run through it all one more time, and you, sir, are in a rut." She looks up, then, and offers him a sympathetic smile, "You're too talented and too miserable to not be writing anything right now. I won't allow it."

Robin scoffs and shakes his head, focuses his attention on his guitar rather than her continued perusal of his drivel and begins to strum through the opening of one of her songs. He gets all the way through verse and chorus, her pleasant hum starting to mark the melody after a few bars. After another minute, she trails off and taps the page on her lap, frowning a little as Tuck promptly drops a tennis ball onto the subject of her attention.

She tosses it away again, and then asks Robin, "What's this?"

 _Slobber_ , he wants to say, but he peeks over anyway and sees a few lines he'd jotted down last week after Regina had spent the night at the bar with that utter wankstick. He'd had a moment of inspiration but it hadn't really panned out into anything.

"It's shit, is what it is," he mutters, insisting, "Don't bother with it."

Unsurprisingly, she's not deterred in the slightest, telling him, "It's not shit. It's good. What does it sound like?"

"Like an unfinished song," Robin declares, giving up on what he'd been playing with a discordant, abrupt swipe of his thumb down the strings.

Tink's eyes roll heavenward as she huffs, "Oh, don't be so difficult," settling the notebook between them and insisting, "Play it for me."

"It's just a bit of a verse, it's not even a whole song," he dismisses. "I've only a vague idea of how I want it to sound anyway."

She nods, a slow sort of too-thoughtful nod that he imagines is entirely insincere. Sure enough, it melts into a smirky smile before she says, "Maybe we can figure out a melody together."

"Bloody Christ," Robin breathes, deciding he's not likely to get out of this and adjusting his grip on his guitar. "It's rough," he warns, and she chuckles a little and tells him she's _gotten that impression, yeah_ , before continuing to wait expectantly.

He'd been lying a bit when he said he didn't know how he wanted it to sound – he had an idea, a melody; he's not entirely sure it's not shit, but it's enough to play a few chords and pick his way through the words:

_Something in the way we leave goodnight  
_ _Makes me make sure you made it home alright  
_ _Something about the way we let goodbye  
_ _Linger little longer every time  
_ _Something how we always almost kiss  
_ _Never seem to call it what it really is  
_ _How long can we go on saying it's nothing  
_ _Maybe it's something..._

He chances a glance up at her as he finishes, and she's smiling, nodding, tells him, "I like it," and then throws another pitch for the dog. The corner of Robin's mouth curls slightly, pushed up by the shallow swell of pride at her approval. And then she asks him, "Why'd you write it?" and he deflates a little.

What is it about Robin that attracts such bluntly nosy women, he wonders.

Plucking his way through a series of arpeggios to keep his hands busy, he tells her, "Regina came to the bar with this absolute tosser she works with," the words _absolute tosser_ bitten off and spit out just the way he wishes that knob head would be. "We almost kissed in the back office—"

"You and the tosser, or you and Regina?" she teases, and he grimaces, shakes his head, tells her he'd sooner pick up Tuck's mess with his teeth than touch that excuse for a man in any way other than a swift sock to the jaw, and they both know it. She chortles, tells him, "You're just full of colorful visuals today, aren't you?" and then asks, "You kissed her while she was on a date with another guy?"

" _Almost_ kissed," he corrects, "And it wasn't a date. The prat gave her a ride home when she had car trouble and then wormed his way into free dinner."

"You don't like him," Tink observes, amused.

"I think he's a pathetic, slimy, arsemonger who doesn't deserve to breathe the same air as her much less sit on a bar stool next to her all night and pant over her like an overworked dog."

Tink laughs at that, brows rising higher and higher with each word, until she says, "Well, tell me how you _really_ feel."

"I'd like him to step on tacks. While I watch."

She lets out another of her bright, amused laughs, and says, "So she likes him, then?"

"No, she doesn't," Robin tells her. "This isn't jealousy, it's… concern. He's an obsessive tosspot who can't see when something is _over_. They went out on two dates, and he's been up her arse like a festering pile ever since."

"You know, if I ever need a really good insult for someone, I'm going to call you and mention this guy," she tells him, and Robin snorts a little.

"What can I say, he brings out my inner Shakespeare," he deadpans, taking a deep breath and then saying, "And the only reason she ever went out with him in the first place is because I fucked things up between us. I was a bloody moron and now she has this plonker to deal with, and I feel like shit about that, too. He followed her home that night – not all the way home, and she doesn't live far, but he followed her to her street. I had some stuff for her, so I saw her to her car, and talked to her and her son for a bit, and he was still just there, idling in his fucking Lexus, that he double-fucking-parked when he came to pick her up that first night because he's an entitled arsewipe. And he wouldn't leave until she did; I had half a mind to follow her home, but my break was almost up."

She's not laughing so much anymore. Now, she's frowning, a wrinkle of concern between her brows as she says, "He sounds like a creep."

"He is," Robin confirms, and then he flicks at the edge of the notebook and says by way of explanation, "So I made sure she got home alright. Texted and all that. And then I couldn't stop thinking about her – no surprise there – so I wrote down a few words. And then I got stuck again, like I always do."

Tink pulls the notebook back into her lap, reads over the words again, hums a vague sort of imitation of the melody he'd put to them. "For what it's worth, just from how you've talked about her, I'd say it's 'something.' And something you should write about."

"To what end?"

"To what end do we ever write?" she asks him, giving the ball another toss when a not-so-patient Tuck noses at her knee for the third time. "Because we feel something, or we have a story to tell, or something on our mind we can't shake. Because something inside of us needs to. Plus, I can tell you from experience that a well-written song played at just the right time can win back the heart of a fair maiden."

"I'm not trying to win her heart," Robin mutters, thinking of Regina the other night, of the pain he's causing her just by being her friend, by being close. He's won her over as much as he dares, now he's just trying not to twist the knife she's not managed to pull from her gut since he wedged it there back in June.

"Maybe that's the problem," Tink suggests, and oh, how naïve she is. But he can't well alleviate that, can he? Not without telling her things she has no business knowing.

So he tells her, "It's not," instead, and explains as vaguely as he can, "I was involved in something that… affected her family, and I lied to her about it. Or kept it from her, anyway. And it's a thing that makes it very difficult for us to ever be together."

It crosses his mind to wish again that he'd never stepped foot into any Mills household before the morning he climbed drunkenly into hers, but he doesn't bother to actually wish it. No point. This isn't a world of genies and fairies and magic and wishing wells, it's reality. Wishes don't come true, no matter how hard you wish them.

"Write the song anyway," Tink tells him. "At worst, it will make you feel better to have written something – you're the poster boy for grouchy, blocked writers right now, and it's a little pathetic." He rolls his eyes and mutters _Thanks_. "At best, maybe she'll hear the song and agree. Maybe she thinks there's something there, too"

"She doesn't need a song to tell her that, we both know it," he tells her. "But it doesn't matter; a song won't change anything."

She actually manages to look offended at that, her jaw dropping open, gaze staying steady and dismayed on his as she blindly tugs the tennis ball from Tuck's mouth and chucks it to the side where it rolls lamely over the grass.

She's too focused on scolding him to give the throw her best effort, giving him a shaming, "How dare you say such a thing," and then, "Songs can change everything, Robin. You just have to believe – in yourself, and in them."

Robin lifts a brow and asks, "You sound like you're about two seconds from shaking pixie dust over my arse and telling me I can fly."

"I'm starting to think that would be an easier sell," she groans, tossing the ball again, farther this time, and harder, earning herself a little reprieve. "Write the song about the girl," she urges again. "Tell me about the nothing that might be something – unless you've got something better in this book of yours."

He doesn't, he's pretty damn sure of that, but she thumbs through anyway, despite his protests that, "I don't even know where to start this thing. And even if I did, I'm never going to sing it for her. I've hurt her enough."

She glances up to give him a little look of squinting dissatisfaction, and turns another page. And of course, because she is _her_ , and he is _him_ , and unlucky, she plants her finger on a scratched out bit of writing she'd passed three pages earlier and says, "Start it with this."

_We keep saying we're just friends  
_ _But I light up when you walk in_

It's not a terrible idea, he supposes, and it's certainly on theme...

"I want to hear it next week," she tells him, as if it's already a done deal and a bit like she's a teacher handing out an assignment to a particularly stubborn student. "You don't have to play it for her, but this idea that you shouldn't write it just because she can't hear it… that's silly."

Tink reaches over with one hand, then, wraps her fingers around his nearest wrist and squeezes to hold his attention.

"You're a songwriter, yeah?" she asks, and while he doesn't feel like much of one right now, Robin nods. She smiles and tells him:

"Good. Now write a song."

**.::.**

If Regina had to sum up her parenting philosophy in three words, they would be: Don't be Cora.

Do not, under any circumstances, make your child feel like he is living under your thumb, even if he is living under your roof. Do not make him feel stupid. Do not make him feel worthless. Do not ever, _ever_ , twist the reality of the world into something he has to be suspicious of. Something he has to doubt the veracity of.

And do not, absolutely do not, allow him to become at war with his body and the things he puts into it.

So when he comes jogging down the grocery aisle with a box of DoubleStuf Oreos after being rejected already on powdered sugar donuts and a box of Sno Balls, she grits her teeth and tells herself to ignore her knee-jerk reaction (something along the lines of "If I let you eat every sugar bomb your heart desires, you will be the chubby kid with diabetes, and Grandma will be the first one to point out our mutual failure") and just warns him, "Those will rot your teeth," before pointing toward the cart as permission to bring them home.

Henry grins and drops them in next to the organic kale, swearing, "I'll brush them right after."

"You'd better," she smirks, before instructing, "Go pick out a fruit or vegetable."

Henry scowls into the cart, and says, "We already have vegetables."

They do. There's the kale and also a bunch of peaches, a bag of cherries, three cartons of raspberries, tomatoes, and zucchini, and snap peas, two bunches of celery for her to munch her way through, a bag of baby carrots, even an artichoke or two.

Even so, "I said yes to cookies, which means—"

"I have to pick a healthy snack too," he sighs, long-suffering and melodramatic.

"Yep," she confirms, and he groans and peels away from the cart, trudges away in the direction of the produce aisle while she peruses the dairy-and-dairy-alternatives case.

She throws in a large carton of the coconut yogurt she likes, then a couple of regular full-fat Greek-yogurt-with-honey cups, reminding the anxious ripple in her belly that full fat means more flavor and less sugar, and it is perfectly healthy. And she likes these particular cups, so there.

She's reaching for two more just out of spite when another cart pulls up beside hers and stops. She turns with a polite smile, ready to tell the other shopper she's finished and will get out of their way so they're not blocking the aisle, but when she sees who it is, the smile freezes on her face.

Sidney Glass is standing beside her, in the middle of the Harbor East Whole Foods at eight PM on a Wednesday, when she knows damn well there's another one up in Mount Washington where he lives, and she also knows damn well that he left the office at the same time she did, because they'd ridden the elevator together.

So his presence, here, on the entirely wrong side of town, throws her enough that she blurts, "What are you doing here?" in lieu of a proper hello. And then she catches herself, clears her throat and says, "I mean, you're awfully far from home."

"I ran a few errands after work," he tells her, "and now I'm restocking the fridge." A glance toward his cart reveals bananas, a dozen eggs, two packs of bacon, a loaf of bread, some garlic hummus (that reminds her, she should grab a container of red pepper hummus to go with her carrots) and two bags of pretzels.

Right. Grocery shopping. This Whole Foods is admittedly closer to work, and they've only left the office… two hours ago. You can certainly spend two hours running errands, Lord knows she has in the past. So this is just… convenient. And awkward.

"Well… what are the odds," she manages, stitching that smile back into place.

Sidney shrugs, and reasons, "Not bad, considering Federal Hill is only about ten minutes from here."

Was that an admission that he'd been following her? No. That's silly, that's not… That's not what he'd meant. He'd simply been telling the truth – the odds of running into her in her neighborhood Whole Foods are not entirely slim. She's here once a week to grab perishables, at the very least.

Still, she points out, "Not in weeknight traffic. You'd probably have been halfway home by the time you found a spot in the structure."

"Maybe," he concedes. "But it seemed like a good idea anyway."

He's looking at her, smiling at her that way he does, giving her a quick once-over; she'd changed after work, is now in flats, a comfortable pair of shorts, and a soft plum-colored top that is thankfully not too clingy and not too low-cut. Still, she's grateful for the blazer she'd grabbed from the back seat as a last-minute safeguard against the store's air conditioning; it makes her feel much less exposed to his meandering gaze.

She's tempted to button it up as he meets her gaze again and tells her, "You look nice tonight."

The unwanted compliment causes a shaky spurt of anxiety in her gut, and Regina catches herself lifting a hand to tuck away a lock of her hair, feels somehow exposed in the action and reroutes to needlessly adjust her lapel. Her other hand stays planted on the handle of her cart, tightens there as she tries to think of a response that won't encourage him, but won't make this even more awkward.

She's saved by Henry walking up with a bag of apples clutched in his arms, declaring, "Apples. Healthy snack."

Regina takes the excuse to look away, smiles warmly at him and confirms, "Healthy snack," taking them from him and settling them into the cart.

"What are you doing here?" she hears him ask Sidney, and glances over just in time to watch irritation flicker over the man's face.

Henry's tone was a little closer to rude than curious, so Regina is forced to scold, "Manners, Henry. Sidney was running some errands after work, he stopped for groceries."

"Oh," Henry says, and then after a pointed look from her, he gives Sidney a nearly sincere, "Sorry."

"That's alright," Sidney excuses, smirking again. "It seems my being here has taken everyone a little by surprise." He adds, "A good surprise, I hope," and Regina wants very badly to be anywhere but between Sidney and the Greek yogurt.

"What else could it be?" Regina answers, wishing in vain that he could actually see what else it could be – desperate, for starters. Unnerving, too.

But he just smiles, either genuinely clueless or willfully so.

When a woman appears impatiently behind Henry's shoulder, spitting an aggravated, "Are you done here, or is there some sort of yogurt convention going on?" Regina has never been more grateful for rude people.

She's about to jump at the chance to move along, shooting the snooty redhead an apologetic look rather than a verbal takedown about whether she's ever heard of the words _Excuse me,_ but Sidney has other ideas.

He puffs up just a little, his jaw clenching before he tells the woman darkly, "There's no reason for you to speak to her that way."

One ginger brow arches high, lips pursing as icy blue eyes roll skyward. "There's also no reason for you to have a tea party in the dairy case."

Sidney's gaze sharpens, and a finely honed conflict barometer rises in Regina (to say her childhood home had had its fair share of arguments would be the definition of "understatement"). She wants to leave as much as she wants to defuse the tension, so she says, "It's fine," and "We're going."

She's taken maybe a step and a half forward when Sidney's hand locks around her wrist, firm and surprisingly strong, halting her progress. Regina freezes, her gaze whipping to him, annoyed and angry, her pulse starting to hammer in her veins.

"No, we're not," Sidney says to her, before looking back to the other woman. "Not until she apologizes to you."

"Well, you're going to be here for an awfully long time," the woman tells him, and if Regina bothered to look, she'd see her glancing toward the Yoplait Lights and wondering if they were really worth the trouble.

But Regina doesn't see it, because Regina has not looked away from Sidney aside from a brief, flickering glance toward Henry, who is watching the whole scene intently, a nervous frown on his face.

"Let go of me, right now," she utters quietly to Sidney, keeping her voice low, and civil, but adamant. It takes a second, but Sidney tears his gaze from the other woman and frowns at Regina, who gives her wrist a little twist in his hold in an attempt to free herself.

His grip opens like a spring, letting her go, and Regina wastes no time in pushing ahead a few more feet, a hand between Henry's shoulder blades needlessly guiding him beside her. She's close enough to hear the woman taunt, "Looks like someone wants nothing to do with you," and really wish she hadn't. The last thing she needs is Sidney needing her approval when she has precious little of it left.

She's quite a bit further down the aisle, depositing organic, cage-free chicken breasts into her cart when Sidney catches up to them again, muttering, "The nerve of some people. Can you believe her?"

 _Indeed, the nerve of some people,_ Regina thinks as she reaches for a pack of skinless drums and thighs as well, answering, "Honestly? Yes. We'd been blocking the yogurt for a good five minutes."

"You're excusing her?" Sidney asks, disbelief evident in the pitch of his voice, the rise of his brows.

"I'm not saying she couldn't have been more polite," Regina reasons."I'm just saying she had a point and there was no need to argue over it."

"She was rude to you," he tells her, as if that was reason enough for his little display.

"Yes, she was," Regina agrees, sighing and turning to Henry, urging him, "Sweetheart, can you run down the next aisle and get a bag of that granola I like?"

Henry frowns and looks between them, entirely aware that he's being sent away so the adults can talk. Still, he doesn't complain, just asks, "The red one or the blue one?"

She tells him, "Red, please," opting for cranberry over blueberry this week, and waits until he's trotted off down the aisle to look at Sidney and say, "I know she was rude, but it didn't need to become a confrontation. It's certainly not the first time I've run into an idiot at the grocery store, and it wasn't worth a battle."

"I disagree," Sidney insists, and Regina wonders how many minutes of this have to pass before they're officially blocking the poultry, too. She doesn't have to wonder long, because Sidney unknowingly gives her an out with, "Someone treating you with anything less than respect is worth a battle, if you ask me."

She lifts a brow, tells him pointedly, "Says the man who just grabbed me in the middle of the dairy case."

"Grabbed you?" Sidney asks, his brow furrowing in baffled offense. "No, no, I didn't grab you. I just wanted you to stop so she could apologize."

"And I wanted to leave, and didn't need the apology. Which you didn't respect." She stops short of bringing up all the other things she's said that he hasn't respected lately, opts instead for, "And if you ever, ever put an uninvited hand on me in front of my son again, I will not be so polite in asking you to remove it."

She can bank on her own anger to make an exit when Henry comes back, she thinks, but it has the unfortunate downside of Sidney scrambling to make amends now, shaking his head and pleading, "I didn't realize. Regina, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to—"

She spies Henry emerging from the aisle, and cuts Sidney off, shaking her head and insisting, "It's fine. Just don't do it again."

His "I won't; I would never," is punctuated by Henry tossing the granola into their cart from about a foot away, earning a mild glare from Regina, and a _Maybe we don't lob food at the eggs?_ as she reaches in to shift the bag of granola off of said eggs.

Henry offers a smile too mischievous to actually be guilty and says, "Sorry."

And because she is desperate to get back to life as usual and not Life-with-Sidney, Regina turns her attention back to the man and says, "Now if you'll excuse us, we have a lot of shopping to get done tonight, and I'd rather not try to maneuver two carts through this place. I'll see you tomorrow."

Sidney is still floundering a bit, but he nods, says, "Yes, tomorrow," just before Henry asks if they're picking up his birthday cake tonight. She's kept it a surprise from him, as usual, only letting him pick the flavor before she special ordered the guitar-shaped masterpiece. And because it's a secret, and he's Henry, he's been pestering her about it almost daily for the last week.

"No, sweetie, that's from a different bakery. I'll get it Friday," she assures, teasing, "I might even let you look at it early this year."

Henry's eyes go big and he asks, "Really?"

"Probably not," Regina admits, with a little shrug, earning a groan of frustration that makes her laugh. Sidney laughs, too, and they really should move along, she thinks. So she urges, "Say goodbye to Sidney," and as soon as Henry does, she heads for the aisle after the one Henry had just run his little errand down. She doesn't need anything there, but she wants to be out of Sidney's sight sooner rather than later, doesn't like the feeling of being watched while she goes about her mundane tasks.

Once they're out of sight, Henry asks, "That was weird; why was he here?"

"He was grocery shopping, just like us," she assures, not wanting him to worry. There's a little pit of unease in her belly, though, and she doesn't manage to shake it entirely until they're back in their kitchen, unpacking bag after bag of groceries.

The next morning, when she gets to work there's a bag of granola on her desk, a pound of the coffee she likes sitting next to it, with a Post-It note that reads, "I'm Sorry - S"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lyrics in this chapter are from "Something" by Ryan Kinder


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mild trigger warning for disordered eating.

Regina believes in good birthdays.

She's had plenty that weren't, plenty that were miserable, or that had started out well enough but went steadily downhill with every moment her mother asserted herself over the whole affair. There had been the one where she'd spilled red juice on her pale pink dress when she was four, and Mother had hollered at her, told her she was stupid and clumsy, and refused to take another picture of her for the rest of her princess-themed party. All the other kids, the castle, even the gifts, but none of Regina in her stained dress. Regina has always wondered why she didn't just pack a spare, you always pack a spare…

And there had been the one when she was ten, where Cora had taken all the presents _back_ because Regina had sassed her in the car on the way home. Or rather, where Regina, when asked if she'd had a good time at the party that had not been the theme she'd asked for, nor the location she'd asked for, nor had any of the food she'd asked for, despite her father _asking her all those things weeks beforehand_ , had simply said, "It was nice." Ungrateful, she'd been called. And every single gift had been mailed back to its sender. The few actual friends she'd had had snuck theirs to her again during playdates over the next few weeks, but the humiliation, that could not be marked Return to Sender.

When she was fourteen, Cora had ordered a cake that was almost too pretty to eat, but so delicious that not eating it would have been a crime. Regina had even gone so far as to sneak a second piece – a grave mistake when Mother caught her and told her that if she kept sneaking food like a starving brat, that dress (which Mother had told her just that morning looked beautiful on her) would get _even tighter_ , make her look _even fatter_. The first time Regina ever purged was on her fourteenth birthday. Coconut cloud cake with buttercream icing ending up a sour taste and a hollow-bellied shame.

Daniel had been determined to make her _like_ birthdays again, had gone out of his way to make them special for her, even if she insisted she wanted them to be _quiet_ if they needed to be acknowledged at all. On a particularly memorable one, he'd made her a picnic in their apartment. Strung fairy lights along the walls, lit candles on every table, and played an old movie on their brand-new big screen TV while they cuddled on a checkered blanket in front of the sofa and ate the manicotti she loved from the Italian place where they'd had their third (and tenth, and fourteenth, and twenty-something and thirty-something) date, and drank good wine, and had what at that point was probably the best sex of her life.

She'd told Graham she didn't like to celebrate her birthday. Bad memories, she'd said, too painful. (Good ones, too, but she hadn't mentioned those – they weren't much less painful than the bad ones then with Daniel dead and buried.) He had shrugged, and said whatever she wanted was fine, it was her day. He'd given her gifts, but no fanfare.

As Henry's gotten older, she hasn't been able to get away with skipped birthdays. He'd asked her once what day hers was and written it on the little calendar she'd bought him, and so for the last three years, she's gotten Breakfast a la Henry (usually cereal, or toast), and a card, and a gift she knows her father has taken him to buy. Quiet, but not unnoticed, and spent with the person who matters most to her. She avoids her mother these days, schedules something with her parents for the weekend before, or the day after, anything but her actual birthday.

Because Regina believes in good birthdays now, and historically speaking, birthdays with Mother have a hard time making the grade.

As with so many things in life, she is determined to leave a legacy opposite of her mother's. _She_ may not love celebrating her birthday, but she'll be damned if Henry ever feels the same way. Henry has loved every one of his ten birthdays; she has seen to it. Has done everything in her power to make sure that his birthdays are _happy_. Not extravagant, or flashy, or expensive, or a status symbol. But happy. _Good_.

And today will be Good Birthday Number Eleven.

Regina wakes early and starts the day with a run on her treadmill, upping the incline a little past her usual and tacking on an extra fifteen minutes to combat the funfetti cake with chocolate buttercream and fondant she'll no doubt be indulging in a piece (or two) of later. It's probably not strictly necessary, the extra time – she doesn't imagine she'll be doing a whole lot of sitting around this afternoon, what with fourteen of Henry's classmates (plus Roland) invited for his party, so she would work off the extra just going about her day. But her blood is pumping, she's feeling good, and it gives her some extra time to think, anyway.

Time to mentally review all her plans and preparations as her running shoes slap steadily against the belt. Said funfetti cake is picked up (and perfect – a blue electric guitar that looks just like the one that is soon to be Henry's), and stashed across the street with Granny Lucas so that Henry didn't try to thwart her and sneak an early peek at it when she wasn't looking.

Granny Lucas is also lending her an extra folding table for the yard – somewhere for the kids to decorate their pretzel stick monsters and color and assemble the toilet paper roll kazoos that she's sure she'll come to regret by the end of the party. Mother would think they are classless and pedestrian, but this party is not for Mother, and Mother will not be in attendance, and Mother does not get a say. Henry thinks they're "awesome;" he'd said as much last night while she'd sorted out sprinkles and sugar pearls and candy eyes for the pretzel sticks, and set aside two different colors of candy melts and a package of caramels so they're ready to be melted down once the party starts.

The toilet paper rolls for the kazoos are also being picked up from Granny – she'd offered to collect them from Mrs. Schuster next door (who better to go to for help amassing twenty TP rolls than the woman with two sets of twin girls and triplet boys?), since Mrs. Schuster and Regina haven't _particularly_ gotten along since that time she called Regina a faithless harlot for having a son out of wedlock, dating a man who often spent nights at her house, and not bringing Henry to church on a regular basis. She has no idea what Granny told her the dozen-plus toilet paper rolls were _for_ , but she's not going to question it.

So she has to stop there, and get all of that, bring it back here and set it up. There's the pin-the-guitar-on-the-musician she'd commissioned from Mal (she hadn't specified anything about the musician, and has thus ended up with a tattooed, mohawked, rocker chick, but she doubts Henry will complain) that she needs to clip to Henry's easel in the front yard, and she needs to fill as many water balloons as she can fit into one of her laundry baskets.

And she has to shower, and dress, and make herself presentable for the parents of these fourteen children when they come to drop them off. She'd made it an open invitation, the parents are welcome to stay and mingle (and assist), or dump their kids for a few hours and run errands. Whichever they'd like. So she wants to make a good impression to the ones she doesn't know – should probably run a dust cloth over all the surfaces in the living room, come to think of it, and make sure there's enough toilet paper in the downstairs powder room.

"Is my cake here yet?"

Henry's bright-but-sleepy voice startles her so much she nearly trips and biffs it, her hands shooting out to grasp the sides of the treadmill in time to catch her as her heart leaps up into her throat.

She hisses a breathless, "Jesus, you scared me," and punches down the pace of the treadmill steadily until she's at a comfortable walk instead of a jog.

"Sorry," Henry winces, walking into the room and flopping onto the couch before he asks again, "But is my cake here yet?"

Regina rolls her eyes, panting lightly as she tells him, "No, it is not. But if you'd like, you can come to Granny's with me and help me carry things back. _Not_ the cake, and no peeking until the party, but I could use a hand with the rest of what she has for us."

"I bet Robin could help," he suggests a little _too_ innocently, and Regina thinks _Nice try, young man_.

"It's not even eight," she points out. "If Robin is lucky, he's sound asleep." And then she adds, "I'm surprised you're not."

"I couldn't sleep," he tells her before popping upright and grinning at her, "It's my birthday!"

Regina smiles, momentarily envious of her son and his youth, and the way he hasn't yet learned to dread the ticking over of another year gone by.

"Yes," she says, "It certainly is."

"Which means special breakfast, right?"

Regina laughs at that, shaking her head and telling him, "Yes, special breakfast, for my special boy. Pancakes or French toast?"

"Stuffed French toast, please."

No surprise there.

"Cinnamon cream cheese or nutella stuffing?"

"Mmm…" That one he mulls over for a minute, long enough for Regina to take a long pull on the water bottle notched into the treadmill's cupholder. And then he decides, "Nutella!" and Regina is grateful all over again for those ten extra minutes.

"Then Nutella it is," she says to him. "I'm going to shower," because she is sweat-slicked and pre-shower, so she has no illusions about her readiness for people other than her son – not even Eugenia Lucas deserves to see her in this state, "and then I will make you Nutella french toast, and _then_ we can go get your cake _and everything else_ from Granny's. How's that sound?"

When he declares, "Perfect!" she feels a little flush of pride that she's at least started his day off well. Now she just has to make sure the rest of it goes smoothly.

**.::.**

It's half an hour before she's showered and dressed down for her morning, her hair blown out, and Henry in actual clothes instead of his pajamas. They giggle their way through breakfast prep and she lets Henry eat three pieces of stuffed French toast to her one, because it's his _birthday,_ a little bit of sugar is expected today, and because she never wants him to feel the way about Nutella stuffed toast that she felt about coconut cloud cake.

Once they have everything swallowed down and cleaned up, they finally head across the street. She spares a glance for Robin's as they pass it, but the house is shut up tight. It's impossible to tell in the daylight if there's any movement beyond the drawn shades, and she shouldn't be wondering anyway, she reminds herself. She's had a few days now to feel sorry for herself, and she's decided that she needs to just suck it up and get over it.

Life goes on.

People move on.

He is, and she should, too. And she's happy for him.

She's not, but she should be. So she'll pretend to be, today, if Miss Blonde-and-Perky happens to come up in conversation, which Regina fervently hopes she does not.

She tells herself again to put it out of her mind, to focus on Henry and not let herself get bent out of shape over all of this again today. Regina believes in Good Birthdays, and Good Birthdays mean Mom doesn't let her inner green monster out to play no matter how tempting. (She's doing really well on that moving on thing, really well…)

Granny is out working in her garden, a wide-brimmed straw hat plunked on top of her head as she hunches over, then straightens and heaves a sigh. It doesn't take Regina long to see why – half of her garden is bent and broken.

Regina's heart sinks, the friendly smile she'd prepared for the other women sliding down into a frown along with it.

"What happened here?" Regina asks once she's within calling range.

Granny turns with a scowl that instantly melts away into a smile for Henry, and a, "Well, if it isn't the birthday boy. How old is it this year? Eight?"

She knows it's eleven, and they all know it. Henry just laughs and shakes his head, says, "Nope, fifteen," and Regina nearly chokes.

"Okay, let's not take so many years away from Mom," she warns, pressing a hand to the nervous swoop her belly had taken at the realization that he is two thirds of the way to fifteen now – more than, in fact. _Too soon_ , is all she can think.

But he's still eleven now, and laughing at her with Granny Lucas, who teases, "Right, right, it's double-sticks this year, isn't it?"

"Yep," Henry nods. "The big one-one."

Regina smirks and rolls her eyes a little, letting them have their moment while she sweeps her gaze over the broken blooms again. Some of the flowers have survived just fine, but there are patches where the stems are snapped in half, or folded over by a good whack of force. Some of the smaller plants near the front have been trampled.

"Kids," Granny grunts, following Regina's gaze. "They've hit a few houses in the neighborhood over the past few weeks. Destroying gardens, overturning flower boxes. It's long past time for them to be back in school, if you ask me. Idle hands are the Devil's playground."

"You sound like Mrs. Shuster," Regina tells her, earning a scoff and an amendment to: _Bored kids spent their last few days of freedom making mischief and my azaleas have paid the price_.

"Jerks," Henry scowls, and Granny grunts her agreement.

"I'm surprised they dared to come after you," Regina says; it's well known that Eugenia Lucas is vigilant as a hawk, and not afraid to stick her nose in if there's any sort of threat to the placid comfort of their little block. Regina's not sure if the rumors about her having been a sharpshooter in her younger days are true, but she's not particularly eager to find out.

"I was visiting my granddaughter for the night," Granny grumbles. "Or they'd have had another thing coming, I promise you. Now, let me get you that table."

It's a bit of a juggling act, but Granny helps, and they manage to get everything back home. After the third time she catches Henry trying to sneak a peek at his cake before the party, Regina jokes she's going to padlock the fridge and sends him outside to fill up water balloons.

Idle hands may be the Devil's playground, after all.

**.::.**

Roland is due at Regina's promptly at two PM for Henry's party, and Tink is supposed to arrive just after at 2:15. But as luck would have it, cross town traffic is light on this Saturday and she knocks on the door at five to two.

"I had to park a block away," she says after waving hello to Roland. "Mifflin Street is hopping today."

"I should have had you park in the back," he tells her regretfully. They've really only room for his and John's two cars just behind their lot, but the neighbor only has one car, Tink could have bled over into their spot as long as she wasn't blocking them in.

"Next time," Tink shrugs, giving Roland a little wave as he comes trotting into the room, a coloring paper clutched in his hand.

"Daddy, can I give Henry this?" he asks, holding it up.

He's drawn the two of them, Roland and Henry – at least Robin assumes so from the black curly scribbles on the head of one figure and the spiky brown coloring on the other. They're both holding something that looks rather like a very large yo-yo, a wobbly sort of line from their hands down to a lopsided circle.

"Of course, my boy," Robin tells him, crouching down to take the paper from him and get a better look at it. "Is this you and Henry, then?

"Yeah, with our guitars," he nods, so not a yo-yo then…

Robin feels a little flush of pleasure at his son thinking to draw them with guitars and then he remembers the formal invitation stuck to the fridge, with all its music notes and the guitar running down one side. It seems Henry's eleventh birthday is a music-themed one, and Robin can't help but think back to months ago, to Regina telling him that Henry hadn't shown much interest in music, to her asking him to teach him the one thing he'd been keen on. And now here they are, at the end of a very long summer, and the boy's gotten quite good at music, as it turns out, and has a whole birthday full of it. It's funny how the things you thought you'd never look twice at can become so unexpectedly vital.

"Can we write 'Happy Birthday' on it?" Roland asks, drawing Robin out of his thoughts.

"Of course we can," he says, and then, "But quickly – we've got to head over soon, the party's starting."

It's the wrong way to phrase things; Roland's eyes go big and worried. "Are we missing it?" he asks, alarmed, and Robin rushes to reassure.

"No, no, not yet," he swears. "We'll be right on time. But you've still got to get your shoes on and all that."

Roland frowns, and Tink speaks up, offering, "Why don't I help you write on your paper, and your daddy can go find your shoes?"

She gets a satisfied "Okay," from Roland and a mouthed _Thank you_ from Robin, and then they all set off to do just that.

A few minutes later –shoes velcroed safely and HAPPY BIRTHDAY HENRY FROM ROLAND written in orange above two boys with guitars –they're ready to head next door. Tink goes with, says she wants a closer look at all the festivities and Robin can't think of any reason beyond "We'll only be a moment" to tell her no.

The yard is not large, but Regina has made good use of it. There are two temporary tables set up side by side, one with a basket of loo roll tubes, and markers, and squares of what looks like parchment, the other with a jar full of fat pretzel sticks (it reminds Robin that he's feeling peckish – he'd made sure Roland had a bit of sandwich before coming over, but hadn't bothered to make one for himself) and bowls he can't see terribly well from this angle. There's a board with a guitarless musician on it, a cup taped to the side of the easel with papers sticking out that he imagines must be some manner of pin-the-something-on-the-someone. A big bin of water balloons, and on a branch that is a bit too low, and probably a bit too frail, a pinata in the shape of a jukebox.

There are several kids there already, and a couple of adults that he imagines are parents – the invite had said parents were welcome to stay but after their conversation earlier in the week, Robin didn't imagine that would apply to him. Or if it did, he figured the wiser thing to do was to leave Regina be for the day, let her do her thing. She needs space and he figures Henry's not likely to know the difference anyway, what with a whole party full of kids vying for his attention.

He figures terribly, terribly wrong.

They've no sooner hit the edge of Regina's yard than Roland is thrusting his drawing at Henry, telling him, "I drew this for you! Happy Birthday!," and then trotting off away from him, headed for the very same pretzels that Robin had been eyeing.

Robin gives the birthday boy a wry smile and says, "He was adamant he finish it before we headed over here, but now it seems he's gone distracted by the snacks."

"They're pretzel monsters," Henry informs him matter-of-factly, adding, "You should make one before mom has to melt the candy stuff again."

"Maybe another time," Robin tells him, "I've got to be heading back to my place. But I wanted to make sure I wished you a happy birthday – it's not every day a young man turns eleven."

Henry's face falls then, stricken in a way Robin wasn't expecting, and he's obviously hurt when he questions, "You're not staying?"

Fuck.

Robin's gaze flicks helplessly toward Regina, who is straightening the loo roll tubes in the basket quite studiously all of a sudden. He stutters, "Oh, I, uh—"

"MOM!" Henry hollers, and shit, _shit_.

Bollocks. This is exactly what he _didn't_ want.

**.::.**

Henry's bellow is what summons her from her admittedly pathetic attempt to look busy while she snuck another peek at that blonde bitch, who is probably a very lovely person or Robin wouldn't even be interested in her much less bring her to _Regina's son's birthday party_. Where was she?

Oh yes.

Abandoning the toilet paper kazoos, scooping up her pride and heading over toward Robin and Henry with a smile she hopes doesn't look as plastered on as it feels.

"What's up?" she asks, and Henry is immediately accusatory.

"Did you tell Robin he couldn't come to my party?"

The question has her brow furrowing in confusion, because she most certainly did _not_ , but then Robin is rushing ahead, insisting, "I didn't say that!" with a shake of his head.

"No, he just looked at you when I asked if he was staying," Henry sulks, and damnit, why can't he be more sly about all this? At least in front of Henry, Henry who will always call them out on any behavior he deems even slightly confrontational, and on his birthday, no less.

Still, she has to be the diplomat. If Robin wants to ditch Henry's party to go on a date, so be it. It leaves a sore, hollow pit in her belly, but Regina Mills believes in good birthdays, and she damn well won't let some insensitive man ruin Henry's.

So she tells him very evenly, "Henry, calm down," reaching over to smooth his hair with her fingertips. "If Robin has other plans, we should respect that. But if he doesn't, he's more than welcome to stay."

She meets his eyes for that last part, because she _knows_ , and _he should know_ how much this means to Henry. Maybe having Robin and his new… whatever she is… at the party will be awkward, but if it makes Henry happy, she will endure it.

But Robin is still frowning, glancing between Henry, Regina, and an increasingly awkward-looking date before he lets out a heavy breath and reaches for Regina, urging her several feet away with the light pressure of his hand at her elbow.

It does not escape her notice that he has put his back between them and the others, drops his voice to keep their conversation from being overheard. He reminds her, "You said having me in your face was painful; I figured it was best I didn't hang around."

"That night," she emphasizes, giving him a little shake of her head. "I just needed a few days of breathing space – which you gave me." She breathes in, out, and bites the bullet: "But it's Henry's birthday, of course you're welcome here. You and your… friend."

She tries not to look at her, really she does, but the woman has let Henry lead her over to show off his various party activities, so she's back in Regina's periphery and those blonde curls do catch the sun. It's not all envy and a petty desire to spill something red on her yellow tank top.

Regina forces her gaze away, and back to Robin's, frowning at what she finds there. He's a little slack-jawed, glances from her, to his date, back to Regina before that dumbfounded look twists into a smug smirk, and he tells her, "She's a friend of Ruby's."

"I'm sure she's lovely," Regina tells him, politely, perhaps too politely, arms rising to cross defensively in front of her too-raw beating heart.

"An ex-girlfriend of Ruby's, actually," he says far too casually, and that gives her pause. An ex-girlfriend. Okay. Well, that's… new information. And then he continues, and Regina feels her cheeks heat and her belly flood with embarrassment at every new word he utters: "She sings. She has a few gigs around town this month and can't really play with that broken hand. I'm just helping her out; she comes by to rehearse."

"I see…" Regina says, feeling stupider by the minute.

It doesn't help at all that Robin looks like he's having a bit of fun at the expense of her increasing embarrassment, not pulling any punches when he adds, "She doesn't date men."

And okay. Well. Alright then. That answers that, and Regina is an idiot. Truly. A really, genuine idiot for jumping to conclusions, for spending a whole week twisted in knots about Robin spending time with someone who is apparently more likely to date _her_ than she is interested in dating Robin.

So that's… "That's... none of my business," she manages.

And Robin, idiot man that he is, just keeps smirking at her. Tickled pink by this whole thing, no doubt. The only thing that keeps her from wanting to overcompensate and bite back at him with her temper is the tempting way his teeth dig into his lower lip for a moment.

The smile he gives her is flirtatious, teasing in a way they have no right to be when he tells her, "You have a terrible poker face, did you know that?"

"I have a great poker face," Regina scowls. She's had to, in order to survive.

"Then you have a terrible jealous face," he compromises as he slides his hands into his front pockets, still smiling, smiling. It doesn't make Regina feel any better.

"I am not jealous," she denies, even though she is a verdant shade of green on the inside and they both know it, if that doubtful rise of his brows is any indication. So she gives and admits what's been eating at her since the weekend: "I have no right to be jealous."

Robin just shrugs.

"I had no right to be jealous of Sidney either but when I saw you leave in that blue dress…" he trails off, tilting his head a little as if that said it all. "I felt terrible you were ill that night but let's just say I really hoped you weren't the only one." She laughs, can't help it, and it seems to bleed the last of the tension from the air between them. He reaches for her hand, hooks his index finger around one of her pinkies until her arms unravel, and then says, "And for what it's worth, I don't really go for blondes. Not my type."

Regina thinks of Graham, of Emma Swan. Of Marian. And she feels very foolish, is certain her cheeks are rosy in a way she can't blame on the heat as she confesses, "Graham left me for a pretty blonde. I may have… overreacted to your new… friend."

His "Ah," is sympathetic, but not so much that it makes her feel even worse.

And then he says what she's hoped he wouldn't, his voice a little softer now: "Please tell me this isn't what's been bothering you all week." Regina glances away, tucks that lock of hair behind her ear, and Robin exhales heavily. "Babe, why didn't you just say something? I'd have set you straight."

She rolls her gaze back to him and says, "Because you have every right to move on, and I have no right to be upset about it. You don't owe me any explanations for how you spend your time, Robin. Or who you spend it with."

"I do when it hurts you," he says, and something in her middle melts, warm and gooey and sweet. He needs to stop saying things like that. And he needs to stop following them up with things like, "And perhaps I have every right to be moving on, but I think it's safe to say it's not really an idea I've been entertaining."

"You should be," she sighs lightly, hoping that she doesn't look as miserable about the prospect as she feels. "We both should be."

But Robin's shoulders lift, and fall, and all he says is, "Maybe so. And maybe one day I will. But today is not that day."

Regina smiles despite herself, and draws her hand from his grasp, tucking it away in the protective comfort of her pocket.

She catches another child arriving out of the corner of her eye – two in fact, the twins, Nicholas and Ava. She gives a little wave to their dad and then tells herself that she needs to stop mooning over Robin and go play hostess. She draws a deep breath in, pushes it out, and asks hopefully, "Can we just pretend all of this never happened?"

"Of course," Robin smiles, ducking his head a little until he's caught her gaze again, and then adding, "But I'd take you over all the pretty blondes in Baltimore. Just so we're clear – you know, in the future."

Regina's middle had only just started to firm up, but it goes hopelessly to goo again, and she tells herself to get a grip. And then she nods a little, managing a flattered, "Good to know," before telling him, "If you have work to do… that's fine. You clearly already made plans. But it would mean a lot to Henry if you stayed, even for a little while. If she doesn't mind."

Robin grins again, and teases, "How big of you," earning himself a roll of her eyes and a smiling _Shut up_.

"And if you need, I can watch Roland after the party for a while, so you guys can work."

"You don't mind?" he asks her. "I shouldn't have shoved him off on you the other day."

"Roland is always welcome here," she dismisses, telling him, "And no, I don't mind. On one condition."

Robin's brows lift in question and Regina names her price:

"Introduce me to your friend."

**.::.**

They end up staying, Tink and Robin. He makes the requested introductions, and then Regina gets called off to deal with something at the pretzel monster table, and he and Tink settle in to help the kids with their makeshift kazoos for a while.

At least that's what they're supposed to be doing.

"You are not at all a subtle man, are you?"

Robin feels his cheeks flush with heat, tearing his gaze away from Regina (she's helping a blonde girl spin and spin, paper guitar clutched in hand, in front of the drawn musician on the easel) to look at Tink. "What?"

"You've been staring at her for the last five minutes," Tink smirks, passing Roland the green marker to decorate his loo roll tube.

"I have not," Robin protests, but he's pretty sure she's right. He can't help it, never can with her. Tink just laughs at him, and he hears her scoff a little on top of it as his gaze skids back in Regina's direction.

"Look, I get it," she teases. "She's gorgeous. Great gams."

The compliment catches Robin off-guard enough that it pulls his attention back, and he shakes his head, snickering. "They really are," he murmurs quietly. "But she's more than that. I'm…"

"In love with her?" Tink supplies, and Robin scowls, glances down at Roland. He's entirely engrossed in covering the outside of the cardboard with more yo-yo-esque guitars, it seems, but still. The last thing he needs is his son overhearing things like that and repeating them to Regina.

So he avoids the question, just says, "She matters to me. I want her to be happy."

"You're at an eleven-year-old's birthday party," Tink points out. "I think that goes without saying."

"Hey, he's a good kid – one of my students."

"Your only student," Tink reminds. "You should take on more. You're good at what you do, you seem good with kids. Why just Henry?"

Robin shrugs, scanning the kids in the yard in an attempt to spot the man of the hour. He finds him engaged in a water balloon toss turned water balloon fight, it seems, laughing and turning a shoulder in defense as another boy lobs a red balloon in his direction. Regina's underfilled them, so it bounces off and lands on the ground, finally breaking in a spray that wets his sneakers. Robin smirks.

"It was a favor when I started," he finally tells Tink. "I never really thought of doing it as a legitimate business. And especially for kids – I haven't had any weekend time free until now, and I work three nights a week."

"That's true," she muses. "Maybe adults, then? I'm sure there are some people out there with free mornings and a long lost dream of playing the guitar."

His next sweep of the yard finds Regina talking to another parent, smiling, squinting a little against the sun. She's in shorts again, and a top in this sort of electric blue that looks lovely against her skin. Tink's right, he needs to stop staring, but she's just so damn lovely today, he can't help himself.

And because he's looking, he catches the way that smile falls away, one hand lifting to shade her eyes. And then she's excusing herself from the other parent, tucking her hair behind her ear as she steps away, her shoulders hunching a little before they straighten. Something's wrong.

Robin mutters an absent, "Maybe," in response to Tink and follows Regina's gaze. What he sees has him straightening slightly, his jaw clenching.

Sidney Glass is walking up the sidewalk, brightly wrapped package (no, packages, he thinks there might be two) in hand.

Regina's gait goes from walk to trot, and she heads him off well before her property line, tilting her head a little as she talks to him. Robin can see the bend of her elbow, the tension in her shoulders. She nods, lifts that bent arm to tuck her hair again, and Robin watches, watches. He doesn't realize he's stood up until he feels Tink's hand against his own elbow and has to look down to glance her way.

"Everything alright?" she asks, brow furrowed.

"Fine," Robin dismisses tersely, looking back toward Regina and Sidney and locking eyes with the man for half a second before Sidney shifts his gaze back to the woman he has no business speaking to as far as Robin is concerned. Regina's holding the packages now. Gifts, no doubt, and the thought makes Robin burn.

"You don't look fine," Tink says quietly. "Is that him? The guy who won't leave her alone?"

"Yes."

"I'm guessing he wasn't on the invite list?"

"Not a chance," Robin mutters.

**.::.**

He's not supposed to be here. It's all she can think as she half-jogs to meet Sidney on the sidewalk, irrationally insistent that she stop him before he even hits her yard. This is Henry's birthday, it is a kid's party, it's not… He's not supposed to _be_ here; she didn't invite him. He should not be approaching with colorful gifts like it's the most natural thing in the world.

And maybe she should be more tactful, but all she manages to blurt in greeting is a baffled, "What are you doing here?"

Her belly goes sour with nerves when he smiles warmly at her, and she lifts a hand absently to press against it.

"I wanted to drop off a gift for Henry," he explains. "I saw it last night when I was out running errands, and I thought of him. You said he plays guitar, right?"

Regina nods, needlessly tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, and says, "Yes, but—"

"I overheard you telling Kathryn the other day that he's getting a new guitar for his birthday, and I know you said his party was today, so I was hoping I could sneak a present into the pile before he opens them. I'm not too late, am I?"

"No, but Sidney… This is a children's birthday party," she explains. "All the adults here are parents, I don't think it would be appropriate if you stayed—"

"I'm not staying," he insists, smiling again and holding the packages out to her. "I just wanted to give you these, and then I'll go."

One of the packages is small and square, perfectly gift wrapped in a shimmery silver paper with a thin purple velvet ribbon. The other is wider, larger, in cheery wrapping clustered with primary-colored balloons.

 _One of these things is not like the other_ , she thinks, reaching out to take them from him despite her trepidation. If he really is just here to drop them off and go, the sooner they can get to "go," the better.

"The silver one is for you," he tells her as she shifts the presents slightly in her hold. "Another little something I saw when I was out."

Of course it is. She makes sure to meet his gaze when she tells him, "Sidney, you shouldn't have. It's not my birthday, it's not my anything, and we've talked about this…"

But he's not looking at her, he's looking past her, looking at the party, and then he says with a hint of jealous accusation, "His guitar teacher is here."

She can imagine what he's thinking – that she'd said no adults and there Robin is – so she tells him firmly, "With his son. His son was invited, so he's here."

"Mm," is all Sidney says in reply, and his eyes go a little flinty before they slip back to her and soften again. Still, his too-casual, "Isn't his son a lot younger than yours?" has her feeling on-edge. Jealousy isn't a good look on him.

"A few years, but they play together often. They're friends." She resists the urge to let her thumb pick at a sticky edge of tape she's just felt at the seam of Henry's package, forces herself to smile pleasantly and tells him, "I should really get back to the party." She lifts the gift and says, "I'll make sure Henry gets this, and I'll see you Monday?"

Sidney's smile is easy then, open, but her nerves are still humming, humming. He tells her, "Of course," and reaches out to squeeze her forearm gently; her grip on the presents tightens reflexively, but he's let her go before she can so much as draw a breath to tell him not to touch her. And then he's saying, "See you then," and finally, finally turning to go, so Regina bites the admonishment back and swallows it down. The last thing she wants to do is give him any reason to linger.

Regina watches until he's several paces down the walk and then she turns back toward her own house, keeping her gaze on the gifts she's clutching for the first few steps. Perfectly civil visit, she tells herself. A little forward, getting a gift for Henry, but they _had_ just spent a whole evening together, and she _had_ been acutely aware of his disregard for her son. She shouldn't be so _unnerved_ that he'd shown up here. He hadn't tried to stay, hadn't overstepped his bounds, not really. He was just bringing a present to a child on his birthday. Could have given it to her at work on Monday, sure, but… It was innocent. No big deal. These skittering nerves are an overreaction.

She tells herself to relax, damnit, sucks in a breath and blows it out, and lifts her head.

And there Robin is, standing next to Granny Lucas's folding table, watching her. He's stiff, wary, and from the way he tilts his head a little in question she assumes he'd seen Sidney. Which, to be honest, explains why Sidney got so steely halfway through their conversation. If Robin was staring him down the way he's staring her down now, hands on his hips, laser-focused, waiting, she's not surprised Sidney had commented on his presence.

Their gazes hold the whole way back to her walk, and as she heads back up into the house she sees him say something to what's-her-name (what the hell kind of name is Tink?), brushing a hand on her shoulder before he starts walking toward Regina herself. Regina quickens her step, isn't sure quite why, but she does, so that she's hitting the door to the house before he even makes it off the grass.

She leaves the door ajar behind her – she wants to be inside, but she doesn't necessarily want to shut him out (despite all evidence to the contrary) – and walks into the living room, setting the small silver package on the mantle and drumming her fingers over Henry's present as she stares at the pile of other gifts piled on top of the piano bench, and tries to decide where to put this dreaded parcel. Tries to decide if she should even give it to him at all. (That's silly; it's a gift. She should give it to him. If for no other reason than that Sidney will ask what he thought of it on Monday, she's sure of that. Any excuse to talk to her...)

In the end, she places it on the far side of the bench, on the floor. Half out of sight, and maybe he won't even notice it (maybe she should open it first – what if it's inappropriate, or just terribly awkward?). Maybe she'll just slyly stop him before he opens it and redirect him to his gift from her and Robin – in fact, Sidney had said the gift was guitar-related, so she probably ought to keep it out of sight, after all, lest it blow the surprise.

She reaches down and snatches it up again, grabs the little silver package off the mantel as well and heads for the stairs. She has Henry's guitar hidden away in the second-floor guest room; she'll put this there, too, and save it for later. After he opens the guitar. Maybe after everyone else has left.

Regina's halfway up the steps before she hears the front door swing open the rest of the way, and Robin's voice calling her name softly. She turns in time to see him spying her on the stairs, and for a moment, they just freeze there. Her halfway up, him in her foyer. She has the brief, ridiculous thought that it feels very Romeo and Juliet, star-crossed lovers admiring each other from afar, her on her balcony, him down below. But that's ridiculous, because they are not lovers, they are not children, and this is not a balcony. It's steps, and it wasn't the stars that betrayed them, now, was it?

So she clears her throat and says, "I'm just running these upstairs," jerking her head in the direction of the upper level in a way she doesn't really _intend_ to be an invitation, but he seems to take it as one, says, _Oh_ , and then crosses the rest of the foyer and begins to climb.

Regina is tempted to tell him that she doesn't need a buddy to hide a present in her guest room, but she bites her tongue and heads up the stairs a few paces ahead of him. Truth be told, she still feels skittish and jittery, her unplanned run-in with Sidney making her feel exaggeratedly off-balance, and as strange as it is, Robin's very presence seems to calm her when Sidney has left her feeling intensely uncomfortable.

Of course, Sidney throwing her for a loop also seems to make her terribly susceptible to Robin's proximity, something she conveniently forgets until they're both in that spare room upstairs, the blue electric guitar along with its amp and various other accoutrements tucked away carefully in the closet.

She sets Sidney's gifts on her desk (this room is mainly her office, on the rare occasions she works from home, serving as a guest room on the even rarer occasions that anyone stays the night), Henry's laid flat with the silver one on top of it.

And then beside it.

And then on top of it again.

She's sighing at how ridiculous she's being when Robin asks, "What did he want?"

He's standing next to her, close enough that she can smell him, a distinct mix of sunscreen (how nice of him to finally remember it exists) and that cologne of his that smells like tall pines and open spaces. She takes a deep, slow inhale to savor it and hates herself a little for the weakness.

Stupid. Silly. Foolish, most of all.

She shouldn't be sniffing men she's told herself she can't have a future with, so she exhales heavily and answers his question: "He was dropping off a gift for Henry." Fingertips hover against the matte-finish wrapping of the smaller silver package before she adds, "And one for me."

"Interesting," Robin comments, in a way that sounds more like "Bullshit" judging by the tone.

Regina gives him a wry smile, picking up the gift for her and fingering the soft velvet ribbon as she points out, "You did say men will go to a lot of trouble to earn points. He knows how much I care about my son."

"Not enough for _him_ to actually care about your son," Robin points out. "He's a tosser. I saw the way he looked past Henry half the night when you were at the bar."

There's a tension in the way he says it, a grumpiness that has her lips curving warmly. It bothers him, genuinely bothers him, that someone doesn't hold Henry in high enough regard for his tastes, and Regina is finally beginning to believe that it might not have anything to do with her. That he actually does just love her son. It's a thought that brings with it a warm rush of _feeling_ , a fluttery flush in her chest that wars with the jumpy anxiety there.

It's not an altogether unpleasant sensation, but considering how aware she is of the way he smells, of the way the diffused light through the curtains makes the blue of his eyes look almost cobalt, it's probably not a good feeling to be indulging. She clears her throat a little and says, "Yes. Well." And then she doesn't really know _what_ to say, so she fiddles with the little wrapped parcel in her hand. "It was probably just an excuse to give this to me outside of the office."

Robin scowls even more deeply and declares, "I don't like him. And not only because I feel the way I do about you. This is three times now I've seen you all nervy after seeing him—" Now she's the one who's scowling, griping internally that she's _not_ nervy, and realizing simultaneously that she's meticulously peeling the tape along one edge of the wrapping with her thumb. She presses it down firmly again as Robin lifts a hand to cup gently at her elbow. His thumb strokes lightly along the outside of her arm, raising goosebumps up her bicep, over her nape, her chest. She's acutely aware of the shift of callused fingertips against her inner arm as he says, "He bothers you. And that bothers me."

Regina swallows; his thumb is still circling against the gooseflesh on her arm, and while she knows she should want him to _stop_ touching her, should ask him to stop touching her, the contact grounds her, in a way. Makes her feel like she's grown roots right into the floor, unable to move. Stuck there while he draws constellation lines between the freckles on her arm and looks at her with a protective possessiveness he has no rights to, but that she finds, in this particular moment, she has no desire to quell.

Her desires lie elsewhere. In the damp softness of that bottom lip he's just licked absently, or the well of the dimple that winks out as he swallows. In the warmth of his palm against her skin, and—

This is bad.

She has a moment of clarity, a moment where she realizes her thought train is headed into a very dangerous neighborhood, and she'd better switch tracks right quick. So she digs that thumb under the taped edge of the wrapping and lifts it decisively, saying, "Yes. He does. But… there are plenty of things in my life that bother me. I've learned to live with all of them."

"You shouldn't have to live with this," he argues, his hand dropping away, fingers skimming along her arm as they go, and she has no right to miss the contact the way that she does. "With him just showing up uninvited, or following you home, or—"

"I will talk to him," Regina assures, a little weary and a lot dismissive. Lately it feels like all she does is _talk_ to Sidney. "Will that make you feel better?"

"Will it make _you_ feel better?" he asks as Regina tugs at the purple ribbon until it falls away, and peels back the rest of the wrapping. The box underneath is velvet, and her stomach swoops nervously.

Jewelry. She'd been afraid of that.

Robin is still talking, adding, "Because if it won't, I'd be happy to have more than a conversation with him. Make it clear just exactly how much he needs to back the hell off."

"Satisfying as it might be, somehow I don't think you beating on my coworkers would turn out well for me. And besides, we're trying _not_ to get you arrested," she mutters, letting the discarded paper flutter down to the desk as she opens the little box with no small amount of dread. The lining is white satin, a pendant nestled neatly inside. It's amethyst, a neatly cut oval of it, wrapped with a little spiral of what she prays are fake diamonds. She presses her lips together for a moment, then says tightly, "Well, at least he's keeping to the spirit of the day."

"What d'you mean?"

Regina snaps the little box shut, the noise loud in the quiet of the house, and tosses it to the desk with a dull thud. "Amethyst," she tells him bitterly, "It's my birthstone. Fitting gift for a birthday party, don't you think?"

Robin scoffs, shakes his head, his face a mix of perturbed and exasperated that she can certainly sympathize with. And then tells her, "Y'know, I know a pawn shop that'll give you a great price for that."

She huffs out a laugh before it clicks what he's really said, and then she realizes – he's well-versed in pawning jewelry; it's what got them into this mess in the first place. That huff breaks into a full-on peal of laughter that has her turning her face in his direction, pressing it into his shoulder to muffle herself down to a snicker. Robin is chuckling, too, his shoulders shaking lightly against her nose, and then that hand is back at her elbow again, and Regina gives in to the urge to fold herself against the front of him, just for a second, just for a moment.

He's a good hugger, after all, and he'd managed to pop her spirits up a little. One of her arms lifts to loop loosely around his shoulders, giving them a squeeze. A quick hug, this time. She won't indulge. But he adjusts by shifting his hands to her hips, and they're warm there, and steady, and she catches a whiff of his deodorant, a soapy-clean masculine scent mixing headily with evergreens and SPF 30, and suddenly she's lingering after all.

"I'm glad you laughed at that," he tells her, his voice right next to her ear, that pleasant lilt of his accent vibrating through her and raising goosebumps again where they'd only just finally settled. "It was a bit of a gamble."

"Mm," she agrees, and then she makes the mistake of lifting her head (the laughter has subsided, she doesn't need to muffle herself against him, and the clean cotton smell of his t-shirt is mixing with everything else in a way that apparently kicks her hormones into high gear – something she absolutely _does not_ need when she's trying to be good). As close as he was before, he's infinitely closer now, dangerously close.

"It paid off," she murmurs, her voice breathier than it ought to be, and her conscience starting to scream at her to back away. Now. Any minute now. Any second, she should be taking a step back so that her breasts don't press against his chest when she breathes in deeply. So that she can't see the deeper flecks of blue in his irises, and certainly can't see the desire there as he drops his gaze to her lips, and oh, no, that is very bad. Very bad.

She should step back, should, absolutely should, but then one of his hands manages to find its way up her back in a sweeping caress that makes her shiver, finding a home in the tresses at the nape of her neck. His fingertips give one little swirl against her scalp, and then she breaks.

That arm behind his shoulder tightens, pulling him down, her up, and then she has those warm, pliant lips against her own, that intoxicating scent of him surrounding her even more. He moans quietly against her mouth, and she answers with a little gasp that parts her lips, something he takes full advantage of, slanting his head a few degrees to the side and teasing his tongue against her. Everything inside her fizzes, warm and bubbly, as her tongue brushes his, an almost tentative, teasing sort of kiss, like they both know—because _they both know_ —that this is a mistake. A pulled-pin grenade they should step quickly away from. But then his fingers are working deeper into her hair, and there's a strong arm banding around her waist, and she feels the edge of the desk pressing into her hip, Robin pressing into her front, that teasing tongue becoming a little more insistent.

There are reasons, she knows, reasons why this is so very wrong, or at least such a very bad idea, but she has spent the last few days imagining him just like this with someone else and it was miserable, and who will ever know if she steals a little moment to claim him with hot kisses one more time? To mark her territory, and no, no, that's not right, he's not hers to—she's not his to—they should stop, she should _stop._

He catches her lower lip between his, gives it a little suck, and she closes her own around his top lip, then plants another soft smooch against him. And then with no small amount of regret, she tilts her chin down, foreheads pressing as she puts air and space and common sense between their mouths, and breathes, "What are we doing?"

"Well, just then I was kissing you," he teases airily, his fingers swirling in a way that feels far too good to be allowed.

She chides him gently with his own name. "Robin…"

He's spilling breathless apologies almost before she finishes the scolding, telling her, "I'm sorry, I know," and "I'm weak for you in shorts; all that leg. I've wanted you all afternoon."

Well, that's not helpful.

She groans a little, presses forward, and their lips meet, another heady kiss, but quick this time, and then they're breaking again, Regina insisting, "We can't."

"Why not?" he asks, stealing another kiss, and then again, "Why not?"

"You know why not," she tells him, their mouths pulling together again like gravity, and it takes all of her willpower not to let them meet, to turn her head just so, so that his lips land next to hers instead of on them. Another soft smooch that lingers, his breath warm against his cheek as he lets out a little grunt of disappointment.

"What if I don't care?" he reasons, and he's only saying that because he's been kissing her, because he's not _thinking,_ and one of them has to think.

Clearly, it's going to have to be her this time, because his fingertips are still doing things against her scalp that she's certain should be counted as cheating here.

"Roland," she reminds, the shrieking of young laughter echoing vaguely from outside the house as if to prove her point (and remind her of even more reasons why she shouldn't be wrapped up in Robin right now – it's not exactly proper behavior for a host). "Jail. Marian won't bring him, right? She doesn't want him to grow up like she did."

Robin pulls back slightly at that, and frowns. "She told you that?"

"Mmhmm," Regina nods, looking into his eyes and then looking away because they are still so close, too close, and it would be so easy to just close the gap again, and… "We can't _do_ this, you know that."

The reminder of just _why_ seems to have cooled him down, a no-doubt unwelcome splash of cold water to the libido.

"I know," he says, closing the gap between them to steal one more kiss, and then, "I know. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have."

"You didn't," she points out, because he's not the one who started this – she is. Just like she started the time before that, and maybe even the time before that, and… "I did. _I'm_ sorry. I can't keep kissing you just because Sidney makes me feel… the way he does. It's not fair to you."

"Is that the only reason why?" he asks, brows lifting up doubtfully. And no, no, of course it's not, but she doesn't say that. Rolls her eyes a little, and shakes her head, but doesn't say it. They both know better, it's clear from his teasing tone.

The hand he has in her hair shifts slightly, slides forward just enough that he can stroke his thumb behind her ear in a way that has her eyes fluttering shut. "Regina, babe, have you heard me complaining?"

"Maybe you should be," she sighs, letting that arm around his shoulders slide down to rest against his bicep and forcing her gaze to lock straight into his. No more avoiding. She lifts her other hand to tangle with the one giving those maddening caresses near her ear, weaves their fingers and stills them. "I can't keep… using you like this. It's not fair to you."

He frowns a little then, and asks, "Regina, do you like me?"

"You know the answer to that."

"And do you want me?"

"You know the answer to that, too."

"And you like having a little snog on occasion?"

She sighs, frustration lacing her tone as she says to him, "Yes, but we can't keep—"

"Then it's not using," he reasons, cutting off her protests and leaving her gritting her teeth in annoyance. "It's not using to kiss someone you want to kiss, who wants you to kiss them. I don't feel used, love."

"What _do_ you feel?" she asks him, finally drawing their hands down from her face. It doesn't do much to untangle the two of them; his arm ends up around her waist as she says, "We never talk about it. We talk about how I feel, and how you're sorry, but… Where are you in this?" She hears herself and thinks, no, that's wrong, corrects, "Not that there's a 'this,' there shouldn't be a—"

"Yes, there is; don't be daft," he chides lightly, blowing out a deep breath. He has both hands on her back, now, running up once and then back down to loop and lock at her waist. "Maybe there shouldn't be anything here, but there _is_ , and if you want to talk about it, I'm not going to pretend we're talking about nothing. Because it's messy, but it's not nothing."

It has to be. That's all she can think: _It has to be nothing_. Because if it's something, it's something she can lose, and she can't… She hasn't had it in the first place, so it's not something she has to worry about letting go of.

God, this is ridiculous; he's right. This may be stupid, this may be dangerous, it may be selfish and misguided and _wrong_ , but it keeps happening, so it's not nothing.

But it's not something she's willing to lend voice to – what's the point if it can't ever become _more_? So she just nods, and hopes he'll continue on without her.

Thankfully, he does.

"I feel a bit like I'm always…" he begins, but then he frowns and seems to switch course, settling on, "Like the goalposts are constantly moving?"

He doesn't sound overly sure, and she frowns now, too, feeling a little prick of guilt in her chest that she's been jerking him around the way she has, and that _her_ mother is the reason for this whole emotional tug-of-war in the first place.

"I want to be what you need, and not be too much, but it's like whenever we figure out what that is, it shifts again. I know what we both want, but I don't know what we're _doing_ ," he tells her, fingers squeezing gently at her back. "Because it's not staying away from each other, we've not done that. And frankly, I don't want to." He has a hand at her cheek again, sliding up to settle there, his thumb coasting in a way she's in danger of becoming terribly addicted to, and it doesn't help at all that he says, "I will, if you want. If you think it'll help. But you matter to me, Regina; I don't want to stay away from you, and I don't think you want that either. At least, it doesn't seem that way when you're kissing me."

"I don't, but I need to," she insists, and because there is a part of her that very, very much wants to kiss him _again_ , she reaches for his hands and draws them away, putting a little bit of distance between them before insisting, "I can't be selfish about this, and kissing you is selfish. Even if you enjoy it, it's selfish."

That mouth she thinks she maybe should have kissed two or five more times before coming to her senses draws into a pout that just makes his bottom lip look even more inviting.

"Why?" he asks, and she wishes he wouldn't, because they both know the answer, they have been _over_ this.

Regina blows out a heavy breath and shakes her head, leaning back into the desk and telling him once again, "Robin, you and I both know that I am not safe for you."

"Because of your mother," he parrots dully.

"Yes."

"And you're sure that she'll know—"

"I won't risk it," she tells him firmly. "I don't know how to find out without putting you at risk, and I won't risk marching you into her warpath, Robin." She still has those hands held in hers, and she gives them a squeeze as she warns him, "You won't win. She never loses. Just, please trust me on this. You don't know her the way that I do."

"I do trust you," he sighs, thumbs coasting over hers, fingers sliding slightly in her grasp. "But I need to know where we stand, truly – so I can stand there. The back-and-forth just leaves us both feeling like shit, and I hate when you feel like shit at all but I hate it especially when it's my fault."

"This isn't your fault. Not entirely, anyway," she promises, finding their bodies somehow closer again despite her perch, the gravity between them sneaking up on her until she can almost feel the heat of him radiating from his skin to hers. She talks just to keep up the pretense of distance, telling him, "We're just… A bad fit."

He denies it immediately: "Not true."

Fair enough.

"Complicated," she amends, and he agrees, _We are that, yes._

But then he tells her, "But I don't mind complicated."

 _Well, isn't that nice for him?_ she thinks, glancing down at their hands, at his thumbs, at the space between them (her knee is pressed lightly against his leg; when did that happen?). It's not enough space, and too much, all at the same time, and it makes her head hurt. Her heart hurt.

She has to _end_ this. New apparently-very-gay not-girlfriend or not, she was right to think this had to end. That they have to move on. They _have_ to, she _has_ to. Before this merry-go-round makes her even dizzier with confusion and longing.

So she tells him, "I have enough complicated right now," and then looks up again to meet his eyes. "Can we just…" He's watching her, intently, his brow knit slightly, eyes frustrated but so damn caring it makes her ache. Makes the words stick in her throat. She has to swallow them down before she can force them back up: "I want to be friends."

It feels like a lie, is a lie; she wants more, and so does he, and they both know it, but, well, Good Birthdays are for Henry, not for her, so it's only fitting that she should spend a birthday party feeling like she's being sawed in half down the middle, her own hand clutching the blade.

"I need a friend right now, more than anything else," she says to him. "I need the guy who let me borrow his car and left me extra fuses, and who watches my son so he doesn't have to see me upset, and who checks on me after I see the guy who left appropriate boundaries somewhere back in July with my sanity."

"You're sane," he breaks in to assure her, and her head swings side to side, her chin dropping down to pull her gaze somewhere near his collar again as she admits what's becoming rapidly apparent to her these last few days. Weeks. Months, maybe.

"I'm overwhelmed." His fingers pulse against hers, urging her gaze to flick up again into the cozy warmth of his own. She confesses, "And I have long-overdue therapy this week, so hopefully next week you can have the woman who watches your kid on Monday nights, and who makes you extra leftovers, and… doesn't try to kiss you every time she wants to feel safe."

His voice is gentle and reassuring when he says, "I don't mind that woman – the overwhelmed one."

So she tells him, "I do," because that woman is _weak_ , and hurting both of them. "But I seem to be her right now, so until I get that sorted out, I need the guy who didn't kiss me last week, even when we both really wanted to, because he knew we'd regret it. Is that okay?"

The breath bleeds out of his lungs, a slow steady leak, and then he tells her, predictably, "Of course it is. And I've been trying to be that guy, I have, since that night at my place."

"I know," she reassures, giving his hands a little squeeze before letting them go entirely and dropping hers to grip the edge of the desk near her hips while his get stuffed into pockets. "I know you have, and I appreciate it. Today was just a slip, for both of us."

Robin's smile in response is a bit lopsided, one dimple winking out at her before he asks cheekily, "Can I blame those shorts?'

Regina lets out a dry little laugh, shaking her head, and telling him, "I'm not sure my legs are _that_ great."

That smile she shouldn't love, but really, really does, goes wide and full as he says to her, "I'm not sure you're a proper judge of that. I assure you, they _are_ that great. But I will try my best to keep from falling under their spell again, at least for a little while."

It takes her a minute to realize that she's grinning at him, too, that fluttery feeling kicking up in her chest, but realize she does. She clears her throat, standing fully and telling him, "We should get back downstairs…"

Robin steps back with a, "Yeah. Right," and she gives her tank top a little tug to straighten, smoothes out any wrinkles with a few passes of her hand. She's just turning toward the door when he stops her: "And Regina?"

"Mm?"

He waits until she's looking, reaches out for her arm and lets his fingers loop it gently, a touch to center her attention but not hold her in place. He does that just fine with his words: "You're not just leftovers and childcare. You were kind to me when you had no right to be, many times over. You're forgiveness, and strength. You came into my life when I felt like dirt on the bottom of a boot, and you've helped me to feel like a good man again." Breath stills in her throat, the poles of their bodies aligning again, putting them face to face and palm to bicep without so much as a hint of conscious effort, for him to tell her, "And I think you are incredible. You give me more just by being you, and letting me be a part of that, than I think you can ever imagine."

It's heartfelt, and honest, and hits her so squarely in the chest that Regina thinks she can't possibly be blamed for the way she lets them snap back together, north to south, lip to lip, tongue to tongue, for just a little while longer.

**.::.**

She has to refresh her lipstick and smooth those wrinkles from her top again before she heads downstairs, and Robin has to take a minute to let his half-mast stiffy deflate entirely before he heads downstairs to a yard full of children.

When he gets there, he finds Tink waiting with an amused expression and two glasses of lemonade. Roland, it seems, has moved on to the pin-the-guitar-on-the-rockstar that he is a quite a bit too short for.

He takes the cup from Tink and she smirks, complimenting, "Nice lipstick."

"What?"

"Peach is really your color," she grins and Robin's guts crackle with nerves for a hot second as he lifts a hand to wipe at his mouth and mutters, _Fuck_.

Tink still seems endlessly amused, almost smug about it, as she teases him, "Making out with the mom at a birthday party. Impressive."

Said mom comes trotting down the steps just then, thankfully out of earshot, and no longer looking like she's been kissed breathless several times.

All he can offer in excuse is, "She was upset."

Tink's not done taking the piss out of him, though.

"Thought you'd fix her up right with a good snog, huh?"

"Oh, shut it," he laughs, his gaze following Regina all the way over to the monster pretzels. He licks his lips to taste her one more time, and then finally takes a sip of that lemonade.

**.::.**

Henry loves his guitar. They save it for last, leave the throw from the back of the couch draped over it, Robin and Regina standing side by side in front of it in the hope he won't notice the little pile is there. And then, when he's opened every other gift, Regina pulls the blanket away with a flourish and watches her son's face light up like a Christmas tree.

His "Really?" is almost comically high-pitched and squeaky as he scrambles to his feet and scampers over to beam at his new instrument. He looks to Robin, aglow with excitement as he says, "It's just like yours."

"Not exactly," Regina tells him gently, bending slightly to his level and settling her hands on his shoulders as she tells him, "This is the guitar you picked out with Robin. After you told me how you _persuaded_ him into the blue, I went to him and told him he should return it and get what he wanted. He thought we should give this one to you so you could learn on your own guitar instead of borrowing his."

It's not true. The guitar had been her idea, not Robin's, and he's not sure why she's lying to make him look better. Maybe that's another thing friends do, after they finishing checking each other for cavities with their tongues.

She chances a glance at him, and finds him beaming at Henry, looking pleased and proud, and she's so caught up in it that she actually misses what Henry says in response.

"We figured it'd be more fun than us sharing mine every Monday night, yeah?" Robin says to him, and Henry nods, and grins, and grins, lit up like the sun.

He goes supernova ten minutes later when he catches sight of his cake, and Regina is so damn happy about it that she eats a whole piece of funfetti fretboard and doesn't feel the least bit bad about it.

Good Birthday number eleven: check.


	33. Chapter 33

Regina keeps Roland after Henry's party, as offered, although it turns out to be a cakewalk of a babysitting job, pardon the pun.

All the excitement of the afternoon, combined with the sugar crash brought on by too much funfetti and fondant, has Roland nearly face-planting in exhaustion by half an hour after the party's end. He's due for a nap—overdue if his surly sourness is any indication—so she scoops him up into her arms and carries him upstairs into the guest room where he can sleep in peace.

Her heart thuds a little harder as she approaches the room in which she'd been making out with Robin not two hours ago, like the faithless harlot old Mrs. Schuster likes to think she is. What had she been thinking? (She hadn't. And it had been nice to not think for a little while, even if that bubble of screw-it-all-just-kiss-me had had to pop eventually.) She half-expects it to look different somehow, but as she nudges the door open with her hip, she finds it just the same as always.

The guest bed is still smartly made, the desk still neatly organized, aside from the wrapped package from Sidney that she should probably bring down to Henry after Roland conks out, and the unwrapped one for her that she should put into her purse so she can give it back on Monday morning with another polite reminder that he can't keep doing this.

Roland is half-limp in her arms, fast succumbing to the rocking cadence of her gait, little fingers scratching lightly at the bare skin of her bicep as he murmurs, "Can I have a story?"

She can't begrudge him a bedtime story before his nap, so she settles him onto the covers, sits next to him and strokes her fingers lightly through silky curls as she tells him a story of a lonely queen who met a fearsome dragon, only the dragon turned out to be quite fond of the queen, and took her for a ride on her back, up over mountains and trees, up into the stars, where the queen could be free and forget all her troubles.

His eyes droop shut halfway through, but she keeps going just to be certain he's truly out – she's had too many instances of a persistently wakeful boy scraping his eyes back open and insisting, "You didn't finish, Mommy," to leave a story before it's done.

When the queen has been returned to the castle, happier now, and less lonely after making a winged friend, Regina presses a kiss to Roland's brow and leaves him to sleep off his eventful afternoon.

And then she grabs Sidney's gift with a sigh and heads back downstairs in search of her son. She finds him in the living room, perched on the couch with his new guitar in hand. It's not plugged in, but he's trying his hand at playing anyway, humming sofly along with his strumming. She sets the present on the table in front of him and he glances over, and then perks up with a smile.

"Another present?" he asks.

Regina forces a smile, and says, "It's from Sidney. He remembered it was your birthday, and gave me something for you."

She neglects to mention that he'd given it to her _today_. Henry had made his feelings about Sidney pretty clear, and she doesn't feel the need to let him know the guy had nearly crashed his party.

Speaking of Henry's feelings for Sidney, Regina watches the gift's origin wipe that smile right off his perfect eleven-year-old face, replacing it with a little frown of confusion.

"Oh," he says, setting his guitar aside gingerly and reaching for the package. "What is it?"

"Why don't you open it and find out?" Regina encourages, loath to admit that she's curious what the package holds herself.

So Henry does just that, tearing back the wrapping to reveal a gift that's just about as lackluster as Regina could have expected. It's a plush Minion, banana-yellow with one big eye, a guitar clutched in his hands. It's cute, but a little… young; Henry smiles a little and says, "Cool. He can go in my room, I guess," and then sets it back on the table and reaches for his guitar again. The Minion will end up on a shelf collecting dust, no doubt; maybe Roland would like it? On second thought no – she can't imagine Robin allowing anything that came from that man into his house.

Mentally rewarding Sidney minimal points for effort, but negative points for decorum and respect for proper boundaries, Regina leaves her son inside and heads out to the front yard to start cleaning up the remnants of a Very Good Birthday, if she does say so herself.

 

**.::.**

 

"Are we going to get anything done today, or are you going to spend the whole afternoon making moon eyes over your neighbor?"

Robin frowns. "I do not make moon eyes."

"Sad puppy ones, then, maybe," Tink continues to tease. "You'd think you'd have a bit of pep in your step, considering you were obviously kissing her."

"It's complicated."

"Good; write about it," she says easily, not missing a beat, and Robin sighs a little, shakes his head.

He reaches for his composition notebook and tosses it her way, telling her, "I already did. It's mediocre."

Tink is already flipping pages and looking smug and satisfied as she says, "I'll be the judge of that." She peruses it for a minute while Robin picks apprehensively at the opening chords, and then she says, "I see. You're one of _those_."

"One of what?" Robin scowls.

"One of those people who believes everything they do is shit, even when it's not," she answers with a hint of accusation, holding the notebook out toward him again and saying, "It's good. Stop kicking yourself, and start playing it for me."

"It's not good," Robin argues. "It has patches. There's spots that just don't… work."

"So you'll fix them," she shrugs. "But it's got verses and a chorus – and I'd like to hear you play it. We can work out the patches together."

He's already learned she's just a hair less stubborn than Regina, if even that, so there's no use trying to convince her to give this up. So Robin shifts his guitar in his lap, and plays through the beginning of the song, a little moodier and bluesier than it had been the last time he'd attempted to play it for her.

_We keep saying we're just friends  
_ _But I light up when you walk in  
_ _You make me laugh  
_ _I make you smile_

He pauses for half a second, the image of her snickering against his shoulder flashing over his nerves as he sounds out the words, and for a second all he can think of is the smell of her perfume under his nose and the slightly fruity taste of her lipstick when he'd kissed her. And then he snaps out of it, shakes off the memory, and continues.

_People talk, but all the while  
_ _We keep saying we're just friends  
_ _Well maybe this is when you tell me I should stay  
_ _Or maybe this is when I'm supposed to drive away  
_ _Maybe this is when we find the words to say_

_Something in the way we leave goodnight  
_ _Makes me make sure you made it home alright  
_ _Something bout the way we let goodbye  
_ _Linger little longer every time_

Robin smiles wryly and glances up at Tink as he sings, _Something how we almost always kiss, never seem to call it what it really is_ , and finds her smirking back at him, and something just sort of clicks then. A sudden sort of rightness to the song that hadn't felt like it was there before, and the rest of it flows out with a bit less anxiety.

_How long can we go on saying it's nothing  
_ _When baby it's something?  
_ _Well, maybe it's something_

_You know I know your number by heart  
_ _I know what you're gonna say even before you start_

He grins and rolls his eyes heavenward a little to sing _Something something, I don't know what goes here,_ and Tink cackles a little, and murmurs, "Alright," before he finishes the verse with _Girl, this ain't the way friends are…_

He takes another swing through the chorus with considerably more ease, changing up the key slightly and doing it again, and then meandering his way to some sort of end, drawing out the last word and then capping it off with a dissonant chord just to be a bit of an arse.

Tink is grinning at him, shaking her head, and looking like the cat who got the cream.

"It's really good," she tells him, "Really, really good. You're sure you don't want to sing it for her?"

Robin shakes his head, and says, "No, not this time." And then he grins, too, and tells her, "I want to write her something better."

Hazel eyes light up with opportunity, and Tink reaches for his notebook again, twisting around to grab a pencil off his desk. He tries very hard, and fails, to keep from thinking about having Regina pressed up against that very surface, bare-assed with him knuckle-deep inside her. One good song seems to have unstuck him, or maybe it was the feel of her pressed up against him again, the way she'd smiled, and laughed, the warmth of her breath, and clutch of her hands, the way she'd kissed him until they were breathless.

He's not sure quite what it is, but he feels a fizzing sort of energy rising up in his middle, a need to put her to paper and melody, to write her in notes and chords, and maybe they'll only ever be friends, maybe he'll only ever be that good guy who backs off before they end up wrapped up in each other again. Maybe he'll never play them for her.

But today, just now, he doesn't think so.

 

**.::.**

 

Roland is still there when Henry starts to complain he's hungry (a sentiment the three-year-old immediately echoes), so Regina resigns herself to half a pork chop for her dinner instead of a whole one, and pulls out a couple of peaches she can slice to fill up the empty spaces on her plate and Roland's.

The boys busy themselves at the table while she cooks, starting work on a puzzle Henry had gotten as one of his party gifts – it's far too advanced for Roland, but she listens as Henry tells him to look for all the pieces with a flat side so they can build the edges first. They'll manage, she thinks with a smile.

She's just put the chops in the pan when her phone rings, a glance at the caller ID making her pause in the midst of wiping freshly-washed hands. WILLIAM COLTER stares back at her, atop a background that she thinks she ought to change _every_ time he calls, because it lances her right in the gut: Daniel and his brother, sun-tanned in matching Red Sox jerseys at Fenway, caps and sunglasses making them look almost like twins despite the three years between them. Regina had taken the picture at a game so hot she'd thought she was going to sweat through her tank top entirely, and it had always been one of Daniel's favorites. He'd set it as Liam's photo on his phone, and when he'd died, she'd found herself one day doing the same. And then immediately regretting it every damn time the phone rang and she had to look at a ghost smiling back at her. Happy, and vibrant, and very much alive.

But she can't bring herself to change it, not quite yet. Maybe next time.

She scoops up the call on the fourth ring, swiping her thumb across the screen and clearing her throat a little to dislodge the thickness that comes with a bubble of too-fresh grief before she offers a cool, "Hello."

"Hey," Liam greets, casual, like he hasn't gone a full eight months without so much as a peep, but they both know why he's calling, so it's no surprise when he asks, "Is he free?"

"I'm just making dinner," she tells him, "But he has a few minutes before it's done."

All Liam has to say is, "Alright," so Regina lets out a sigh and turns to hold the phone out to her son.

"Henry, it's your uncle," she tells him, and he looks up from his puzzle pieces with an expression of curious, cautious interest that she thinks he reserves just for that phrase. And then he's slipping off his chair and coming to take the phone from her, lifting it to his ear and offering a hello of his own.

He gives a cautious glance back at the puzzle on the table, and Regina smiles and nods at him, moving to join Roland and make sure he doesn't recklessly mash any ill-fitting pieces together while Henry is otherwise occupied.

She hears him say, "Yeah, I had a party – it was really cool. We had water balloons, and a piñata, and I got a guitar!" as she looks over the collection of pieces the boys had begun sorting. "Mom, can I use the video and show him?" Henry asks, and she glances up and tells him, _Yes, of course_.

And that's that for Henry – he's off into the living room immediately to show off his new Les Paul, and Regina is left to find the rest of the dark edges of Hogwarts Castle with Roland.

"We're looking for the black ones that are flat," he tells her authoritatively, and she smirks, and says, _Got it_ , reaching for a piece of blue sky without a single flat edge and teasing, "Like this?"

He giggles, and insists, "Noooo," and bites his tongue in a way that reminds her immediately of Robin as he tries to hunt down a suitable piece. It's a good thirty seconds at least before he holds one up and says, "Like this!"

"Oh, I see," she assures him with a solemn nod, and they spend the next few minutes hunting for matching pieces. Regina can spot no less than six already, but it's good for him to find them himself, so she only reaches for one.

Henry doesn't come back for several long minutes, and Regina finds herself zoning out on the puzzle pieces in an attempt to listen to the conversation happening in the other room. She's not sure if she can call it motherly concern, morbid curiosity, or just plain nosiness, but she tries to keep an ear on his conversations with his uncle, most of the time. It's not a lack of trust, not at all, it's just that she worries that she might have to run some interference, or rescue him from a conversation that stalls out. Why she always frets Henry and his uncle won't have anything to talk about when there's months of missed time to cover whenever he calls is beyond her – but maybe it's just that: those months of radio silence have always left her and Liam at a loss with each other, a Daniel-shaped chasm between them that keeps conversation from straying past the awkward pleasantries.

She thinks of that day at the ballgame, of the three of them laughing and sweating, and gulping down drinks that refused to stay ice cold for even ten minutes while they did something as casual and normal as cheering on a baseball team, and her middle aches again. She'd been so _happy_ then, so carefree with Daniel, and so comfortable (if not close) with what was left of his family. With what was going to be _their_ family, hers and Daniel's. He should _be_ here, tossing water balloons at his son's Very Good Birthday, and the thought of him, of his family, of what could have been, shouldn't still leave her with this gnawing, aching, sadness.

And this guilt.

Because she knows the reasons these calls come so few and far between, and she knows they don't all bear the names Daniel and Distance. She knows some of them go by Awkward, and Bad memories, and Cora, and Effort, and Graham and _How can you even think of moving back there? Daniel despised your mother._

"Does this one go?" Roland asks, shaking her out of her thoughts, and she looks at the piece he's found that is not an edge piece, but sure enough, fits right on top of one, and he's placed it in just right.

"It certainly does, baby," she praises, reaching over to stroke her fingers through his curls, a smile stitched on her lips. She needs to focus on this, on the present, not the past.

On the dinner she's likely to burn if she lets it sit unattended much longer. She gets up to check on the pork chops again, leaving Roland with a group of pieces that she assures him all fit in a line if he arranges them right, to keep him occupied while she turns the chops, and makes quick work of slicing up those peaches.

Henry is still on the phone when she's filled three plates with chops, and peaches, and brown rice for the boys from the ready-made cups she keeps in the pantry for when she's feeling too rushed or too lazy to cook up a proper pot. She adds the leftovers from the cucumber salad she'd made the night before, some of the cherry tomatoes she'd pulled off the plant on the front porch this morning, pours Roland half a cup of lime seltzer when he asks for soda with his dinner.

And then she carefully shifts all their puzzle pieces out of the way, sets down each of their plates, and resigns herself to having to cut off Henry's birthday call so he can eat his food while it's still hot. He can always call back after dinner, she reasons, if there's more they want to talk about.

Regina pokes her head into the other room and tells Henry, "Dinner's ready," then gives a sternly pointed look to the socked feet he has resting on her coffee table.

Henry pulls his feet back and sits up, still on the video call, it seems, as he looks at the phone and says, "I gotta go. But thanks for calling."

"I wouldn't miss it," she hears Liam assure, and then, "Give the phone to your mom for a minute, would you?"

Regina fights the urge to frown at the request, watching Henry make his goodbyes and telling him, "The blue plate is yours," as he passes the phone to her on his way back into the kitchen.

She takes his place on the sofa, curling her knees up and propping her elbow on the back cushion to bring herself back into frame. And there he is, Liam, sporting a full beard (it looks better than the unfortunate goatee he'd been trying out last fall when he'd come down and taken Henry to D.C. for a day over Columbus Day break), and a backward baseball cap. It takes her a half second to realize it's the same one he's wearing in that damn picture on her phone, and what are the fucking odds?

"Can we take this off video chat?" she asks him, making the excuse that, "I don't like staring at my own face when I talk."

Liam scoffs a laugh and teases, "Admit it, you just don't want to look at my ugly mug."

If only he knew how right he was.

But neither one of them will be helped by scraping open old wounds, so prays her smirk reaches her eyes and taunts back, "Well, you said it, not me."

They switch to a regular voice call, and she asks, "What's up?" even though she's pretty sure she knows. Liam calls on Henry's birthday, Liam calls on Christmas, Liam calls on January 21st, but all those calls are for Henry. If he calls to talk to Regina, it's only ever for one reason, and sure enough, he doesn't disappoint.

"I want to see him." No surprise there. But when he adds, "I thought maybe I'd come down for Labor Day weekend and take him camping for a few days," she's glad they ended the video call, because she's absolutely certain she couldn't have stopped her brows from rising up to her hairline.

Irritation wars with genuine bafflement – it's not unlike him to call on short notice with a request to see his nephew; quite frankly, she'd be more surprised if he'd actually had the consideration to plan weeks in advance. But a few days? And camping?

"The three of us?" she questions, her plans for a quiet and restful long weekend giving a pitiful wail of protest at the thought of pushing down the memory of Daniel for three days straight.

But instead he says something at once relieving and concerning: "No, just me and Henry." And then he sticks her right between a rock and a hard place with, "Like Daniel and I used to."

Her first response is immediate: "You are not, under any circumstances, taking my son out into the wild for several days with nothing but a compass, a bed roll and—"

"Yeah, I know that," he cuts her off before she can get to the part about being eaten by bears or wayward rural serial killers, annoyance starting to bleed into his voice, too. "Normal camping – I thought I'd take him to Owens Creek, up in Catoctin Mountain Park. We'd pitch a tent, make some s'mores, roast weenies over the fire. Kid camping. It's not far from you guys, and they have designated campsites, and bathrooms, and all that. It's perfectly safe."

"Be that as it may," she tells him slowly, "You can't just… do this. Disappear for eight months and then call up and ask if you can take him for a holiday weekend, on no notice."

"I called on Daniel's birthday."

"Yes. In January," she reiterates. "It's August." Regina inhales deeply, and adds, "And you've never taken him for more than a day trip before. Now you want a three-day weekend?"

"Two," he reasons. "I'll pick him up Saturday morning, bring him back on Monday. It's only two nights, Regina."

"It's two more than you've ever asked for in eleven yea—"

"Well, it's not my fault you moved so fucking far away," he bites, temper flashing, and Regina feels twin flares of her own ire and sharp guilt. Before she can let either of them spill out, though, Liam is exhaling heavily and muttering, "Sorry," and then "He's older now. I thought maybe… I thought it was something Daniel would like."

"Is it something _you_ would like?" She questions. "Because it's not enough that Daniel would want it, Liam. You have to want it, too. Trust me, he will know if you are just spending time with him because you think you have to; and I won't put him through that."

"Yes, I want to," he tells her, his voice softer, more sincere. "It would mean a lot to me. I get that it's new, and I get that it's more than I usually ask for, but didn't you used to ask me all the time if I wanted to be more involved?"

"Yes," she replies, before pointing out, "And you never were. And that's fine, I get it. _Believe me_ , I get it. But why now?"

A very selfish part of her wonders why now, when she has enough on her plate to think about without the added irritation of fair-weather uncles, or having to fret about Henry being away for two days. Not that he can possibly know that – but if there's any sort of higher power up there, why are they choosing _now_ to orchestrate this little moment of growth on Liam's part, when she is already spread thin by The Robin Situation, by Sidney, by her mother?

"I'm not great with babies," Liam admits, pulling her back from her little internal pity party. "Little kids, I don't really know what to do with." Regina sighs softly – he doesn't have to tell _her_ that. She has vivid memories of the few awkward meetings they had when Henry was really little. Regina and Liam stuck trying to make small talk around the elephant in the room while Liam tried to engage with her son with all the paternal warmth of a brick. "But I had a lot of fun with him last fall, he's older now, he's easier to talk to. And I feel like… I should have been there. He should have a guy in his life, and Daniel's not here."

Her first thought is that they don't need anyone else, her and Henry. Something about Liam always makes her feel a little over-defensive of her parenting skills – probably because he was one of the first to doubt them, before Henry was even born. The first to say she wasn't doing what was best for him by moving home.

But there's no use in re-hashing that old argument, it won't go anywhere, so she opts for her second thought instead:

"He has someone."

She keeps her voice quiet, Roland's laughter from the other room making her suddenly acutely aware of the fact that she's having this conversation within earshot of her son. If she can eavesdrop on him, he certainly can on her.

There's a momentary pause, and then Liam asks, "I thought you broke up with that guy a while ago?"

"I did," she tells him, "I'm not talking about Graham. Henry has someone in his life – not a boyfriend of mine; he's here for Henry, not just for me." Something anxious and uncomfortable squirms in her gut, a feeling like she's being scrutinized through the telephone line even though she knows she isn't really. Still, she feels compelled to define what Robin actually _is_ to them, but how? Almost-ex-boyfriend-turned-confidante-and-guilty-pleasure-and-pseudo-father-figure-for-her-son? That's quite the mouthful.

She settles instead on adding, "A family friend."

Maybe the wrong choice, since Liam is quick to point out: "Well, I'm family."

Regina shuts her eyes and presses her thumb to the spot along her brow bone that is beginning to ache, assuring him, "I'm not trying to step on that, and I'm not trying to make you feel bad for not being here more when he was younger." Because she's made peace with that, she really has. After ten years, and several long conversations with her therapist she really has found a place of acceptance where Liam is concerned. And besides, "We've done just fine, and he's a great kid, and it's not like you haven't made an effort, even if your advance planning skills leave something to be desired." She adds that last part as a dry mutter, and hears him sigh over the line. "I'm glad you want to spend time with him; he should know his dad, he should know the things that came before I was with him. You just caught me by surprise tonight." And because she means what she says, and Henry really _should_ know more about his father, more about his grandparents, about his roots, she concedes just slightly: "You can definitely come down for the weekend and spend time with him. But I need a few days to think about the camping, alright?"

It's a reasonable compromise as far as she's concerned, and Liam must think so, too, because he offers her a less-than-enthused but resigned, "Fine. Thanks."

"Yeah."

She's about to say goodbye when he adds, "And Regina?"

"Hmm?"

"He _is_ a great kid. And I'd say it's, y'know, good genes," he chuckles, "but I know it's because he has a great mom. Daniel would be really proud of him, of both of you." Well, damnit. Tears well up and grip at her throat, pinching it tight, closing it until she swallows hard. It's one of the most heartfelt things he's ever said to her, and as someone who has known her since before Henry was even a thought, as someone who hasn't always felt the words he just said to her… well, the compliment hits home. It gives him time to tack on a quiet and unmistakably self-loathing: "Probably not of me, though."

Another swallow and a gentle clearing of her throat, and she's able to give him a token of understanding in return, a soft reminder that, "Daniel never had to lose his brother. You've done what you could, and Henry is no worse off. I've made sure of that – and I have to keep making sure of that. So let me think on it, and I'll call you in a few days."

"Alright," he says, and then his deep inhale rushes over the line before he says, "I'll stop in Vermont and get some of that maple candy you like," a hint of teasing in his voice that pushes her instantly back into a memory of Daniel coming home with said same candy, the box dented from being shoved into his camping backpack on the ride home.

She smiles through a splintering heart and forces herself to tease him back: "Don't think you can win me over with sweets, Colter."

"I have it on good authority that it works," he tells her, and her chest grows even tighter, memories squeezing her eyes shut, making her grateful that he's the one saying, "Goodbye, then. Tell him I'll see him, yeah?"

"Yeah," she rasps, managing a, "Bye," before she's able to hang up.

Regina breathes through the tension in her chest, the wobbly feeling in her belly, keeps her eyes firmly pressed against emotions too strong for two little boys just trying to eat some pork chops on a birthday night.

She sits there for a few more minutes, breathing, until she can blink her eyes open and brush away the few traitorous tears that cling to her lashes.

And then she clears her throat, and pushes herself from the couch. She can grieve a little more later, if she really needs to, but right now there's a puzzle she needs to help solve.

 

**.::.**

 

Regina lets Henry have leftover birthday cake for breakfast on Sunday morning. She shouldn't, but it's still _sort of_ his birthday, and he'd seen it there in the refrigerator and asked. One morning of cake won't kill him, and she absolutely refuses to turn him against his own birthday cake, so cake for breakfast it is.

She doesn't eat any. She should, should just have a piece with her coffee and say who cares? Mother won't know; it's not like she has spies in the house. But however anxious she had been two weeks ago before going to meet her mother, today is ten times worse.

They haven't spoken since that coffee date. Not a peep. Not a text. She's spoken to Daddy, arranged lunch today, at noon, at the country club. She'd wanted to tell him to tell her mother to just stay home — because there has not been a word between them, and so there hasn't been an apology for the things Cora had said.

But then again, she didn't really expect there to be. That's Mother being Mother. She's no more likely to apologize for being judgmental and cruel than she is to wear mismatched shoes.

But it's Henry's birthday, and how would she explain Cora's absence without involving him in things he's much too young to know about anyway? So she'll be there, and her mother will be there, and she'll manage. Regina has already picked out a dress, a grey one that is modest but sophisticated, and goes well with pearls. She'll do her hair the way Mother prefers it, and she will show up fifteen minutes early the way Mother prefers it, and she will smile and play the part, and do whatever she has to in order to make today smooth and pleasant sailing.

It's Henry's birthday lunch, and she will not let Mother ruin it, even if it means she has to do everything she hates. Has to let her win, just for today.

She will do anything for Henry's happiness, to give him another day that falls under the umbrella of Good Birthday. Even bend for Mother.

"Your granola's gonna get all soggy, Mom," Henry tells her, startling her out of her thoughts, and sure enough, the yogurt she'd been not at all eating has made her cranberry-pecan granola a bit on the mushy side. Still edible, but not ideal.

"I'll live," she assures him with a smile, spooning up a mouthful.

She nearly chokes on it mid-swallow when Henry asks, "Are you thinking about grandma?"

"Why would I be doing that?"

Henry shrugs his shoulders and says, "You always do when she's going to come over. Or when we're gonna go over there. And plus, I haven't seen her all summer. Not since I made her mad on Mother's Day."

"Sweetheart, you didn't make her mad," Regina reassures. "I've told you that. Your grandmother is just… your grandmother."

"But we usually see them more," he says. "We haven't been to the Club at all, and we usually go swimming, and go to the fourth of July, and the carnival. Or we just go to Grandma and Grandpa's."

He's right, of course. And she supposes she was stupid to hope he hadn't noticed. Henry's a smart boy, with a good memory. Still, she says, "We've had a busy summer."

"No, we haven't," Henry retorts without missing a beat, and she scowls. "We could've gone. But we never have. And we haven't seen Grandma at all, just Grandpa."

"I've seen your grandmother."

"Yeah, _you_ have," he says, "but I've only seen Grandpa, when he came over for lunch last month."

Regina doesn't like this – the direction of this conversation, the conclusions it leads to. It has her already frayed nerves wearing even thinner, and she's not sure exactly what he's getting at here, so she decides to just come out with it and ask.

"Henry, where are you going with this?"

He shrugs again and asks, "Are you trying to keep me away from Grandma, or Grandma away from me?"

"Oh, sweetheart, it's not like that, it's nothing like—" But it is, and if she finishes that sentence, she'll be lying to her son, and that's something she'd rather not do if she can help it. So she bites the bullet, and says, "Grandma away from you. But not because of you, or anything you did. Because of me." His brow furrows a little, but he doesn't say anything, just looks expectantly at her, like she's not done. So she supposes she probably shouldn't be, takes a deep breath, and explains, "I was angry with her, after Mother's Day. I didn't like the way she treated me."

"She was a jerk," Henry says, resolutely, and Regina can't help the weak little laugh she lets out.

"Yeah," she agrees. "She was. So I didn't talk to her for a while, and… Things are a little strained between us right now, but we're trying to work it out. But your grandmother isn't always the most reasonable of people, and she can be hurtful, especially when she's not getting her way. I didn't want you there for that, if that's how things were going to be." She glances down at her now-plenty-mushy granola, stirs it a little anxiously with her spoon as she talks, and adds, "So you're right. We haven't seen her all summer. But we're going to see her today."

Lord help them.

She gives Henry a smile, can feel that it's a little tight, a little forced.

His "Do we have to?" has her brows rising up nearly to her hairline.

"What?"

"Do we have to?" he repeats.

"Henry, it's your birthday," she tells him needlessly. "Don't you want to see your grandparents? Have a nice lunch, get your presents?"

He gives her this sort of wincing grimace and admits, "Not really. I mean, I want my presents, but they're not going anywhere. And yesterday was really fun. Lunch with Grandma doesn't sound like it'd be much fun – especially if you guys are mad at each other."

She shouldn't be hurt by that. Shouldn't feel rejected. He doesn't know how badly she'd wanted this for him – a nice day, something special. Doesn't know the barbs she took from her mother to get it. So she shouldn't be hurt by it, but she's pretty sure she _should_ feel guilty. She's thirty-five years old, and cannot manage to have a peaceful enough relationship with her mother for her own son to enjoy his birthday.

But it's his day, his weekend, so she nods a little, stirs her granola, stares at a dried cranberry that is in danger of rehydrating if she doesn't actually eat some of this soon, and tries to think of the right thing to say.

She's taking too long, she must be, because Henry speaks up again. "I just wish we could do something else today instead."

She looks up at that, and asks, "Well, what would you rather do with your day? If you could do anything."

"Anything?"

"Anything."

He grins at her then, one of his contagious, mischievous little grins, and says, "I wanna go to the Smithsonian."

Regina laughs. She's not sure why, it just strikes her as… absurd? Not absurd, that's not right, but it's not at all what she'd been expecting to come out of his mouth. She shouldn't be entirely surprised, considering he'd talked to Liam the night before, and she asks him, "Does this have anything to do with you talking to your uncle last night?"

"Sort of," Henry admits. "I was just thinking about the last time I saw him, and we went to the air and space museum, and saw a lot of cool stuff. And went to the American History museum, too, but we didn't get to see all the stuff."

"Well, it's a big place."

Henry nods around the last bite of his cake.

Regina can't help but smile at the sight, and suddenly the last thing she wants is to subject him to a day of forcing happiness around her witch of a mother. So asks him again, "You want to go to the Smithsonian?"

"Yeah," he says, smirking at her.

"You want to blow off lunch with your grandparents to go down to DC."

"Uh huh."

"Today?"

"Yep."

"Right now?"

"Right now," he confirms.

She chuckles a little, lifts her coffee, and pauses just before sipping to ask one more time, "That's what you want for your birthday?"

"That's what I want for my birthday," he says, as she takes that sip and savors it.

She'll pay for it later, she knows she will, but the idea of a day trip with her son, of museums, and lunch, and sunshine, and no overbearing, manipulative Mother breathing down her neck is just too tempting. And besides, didn't she say she'd do anything for his happiness? She's sure as hell not putting Mother's first, not today, not on his birthday weekend. Not for someone who thinks eleven isn't all that special anyway.

Daddy will forgive her, he always does, so she lowers her mug, looks at her son, and says, "Well, then we'd better go get dressed."

His eyes light up, his whole face does, his grin going big and wide and elated as he asks, "Really?"

"Really," she tells him, and his triumphant whoop is worth whatever hell she will undoubtedly catch from her mother for cancelling their plans.

The day is every bit as free and wonderful as they both hoped it would be, from the drive down with the radio turned up maybe a little too loud (Henry's a bit punchdrunk with the spontaneous adventure and swerves in his seat to the rhythm of the music), to the seemingly endless array of exhibits for them to explore (telling him the things she knows, letting him know how proud and impressed she is about the things he's able to tell _her)_ , to a lunch of burgers and fries and a milkshake for Henry (much more pleasant than picking at a salad under Mother's watchful eye). She even buys him four more birthday gifts at the gift shop, and then spends the drive home sneaking glances at him as his eyelids start to droop despite his best efforts, a little smile still pressed to his angelic cheeks, her heart bursting with how much she _loves_ him.

More than she ever dreamed she could love anything, or anyone, and more and more every single day.

They arrive home tired, but happy, and Regina doesn't regret their change of plans for a second.


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter would not have been possible without the insight, skill and talent of [LillieGrey](http://archiveofourown.org/users/LillieGrey/pseuds/LillieGrey)

Regina has an overwhelming sense of deja vu on Monday morning, as she makes her way to Sidney's office with a sheen of unease lining her gut and that small velvet box gripped tightly in her fist.

They cannot keep doing this. He cannot keep ignoring her requests to stop leaving her gifts, she cannot keep having to shut him down politely. He needs to _hear_ her. But at the same time, she needs the accounts he holds. Needs to be able to work with him without it being even _more_ awkward. So endeavors like this require a certain amount of tact and careful manipulation.

In that spirit, she makes an effort to wipe clean the slight frown she can feel on her face, and replace it with a smile she hopes is not too encouraging, but pleasant nonetheless.

And then she pops her head into his office and asks, "Can we talk for a minute?"

He'd been scowling at his monitor, but Sidney looks up at that, his whole demeanor shifting, a smile blooming to smooth the furrow of his brow and crease the dimples in his cheeks.

"Of course," he tells her, "I'm always free for you."

Keep smiling, keep smiling, keep smiling…

Regina takes a step into his office, shutting the door behind her to afford them some semblance of privacy as she shuts him down again.

She holds up the box and says, "This is beautiful. Truly." His smile widens, and then falters when she sets it on his desk and says, "But I can't keep it."

"Of course you can," he insists. "It's for you; it's a gift."

"Sidney, it's too much," she tells him, not unkindly but in a way she hopes he understands is sincere. "I can't accept something like this from you."

That smile is gone entirely now, his face fallen as he stares at the little box between them; his crestfallen expression makes guilt slice through the middle of her, and she resents it. She shouldn't have to feel guilty because he can't take no for an answer.

And then he tells her quietly, "I just want you to feel appreciated," and she somehow feels even worse.

"And I do," she assures him. "I know how much you appreciate what I do, but… we're not together."

The look in his eyes when they lift to hers is entirely too hopeful, and he starts to say, "We could—" but she doesn't let him finish.

"Sidney. Please," she cuts him off, all business now. "We're not together, and I can't accept something like this from you. So thank you for the gesture, but I have to give this back." And because he apparently needs to hear it, she adds, "And I need you to not give me anything like this again."

Sidney's gaze holds hers for a second, unreadable beyond his obvious disappointment. And then he clears his throat slightly and reaches for the box, covering it with his hand and drawing it back towards him as he says, "Alright. I'm sorry." His fingers close around the little box and grip, and he keeps talking, telling her, "You work so hard, and you do so much for your son, and… I wanted you to have something nice. Something for you." She has to remind herself that it's not true. That it's probably not true. That he went out of his way to get something for Henry so he had an excuse to give her this, something thoughtless and banal, that he showed up at her home without asking to deliver it to her. This is about showering her with gifts and favors in the hope that she'll change her mind about them, not actually a gesture of genuine kindness gone awry. It doesn't help when he adds, "You've seemed a little down lately."

If this was anyone else – Kathryn, Mal, her father – she thinks she'd be grateful that they'd even noticed. But as it is, she reminds herself to do a better damn job of hiding her pain.

She plasters a smile on her face, can feel how tight it is as she lies through her teeth and tells him, "I'm alright. And I appreciate the sentiment. Thank you, for thinking of me," because politeness demands it. Mother would skin her alive for not having enough manners to be grateful at least on the surface. "But we've talked about this, and I hate having to come in and talk about it again. I just want things to be… the way they were."

"I gave you gifts before," Sidney points out, and Regina wishes she'd had the guts to refuse them from the start. That she'd told him five years ago that she was not interested, would never be interested. But it had just looked like kindness then, thoughtfulness and…

And anyway, those gifts were, "Small ones. Every now and then when you said something made you think of me. But this is too much and it's definitely too much for a 'just because' gift."

"I understand," he tells her, finally lifting the box from the desk and running his thumb over the soft lid. "I'll, uh, I'll take it back then, I suppose."

Something in Regina's middle unspools, relief and gratitude that he'd given in without much of a fight.

But after she offers a very sincere, "Thank you," the air in the room starts to thicken. He doesn't answer, just nods mutely, and walking out without another word seems wrong, but she doesn't know what to say that won't draw this out. The seconds are already starting to stretch, and she really, truly does want things to simply go back to the way they had been a month ago, two months ago, so she tries to carry on like this is business as usual. She shrugs her shoulders, and throws him a bone: "Do you want to review the TLK numbers over lunch?"

They need to anyway, and she will put up with an hour of Sidney making eyes at her if it means that their working relationship will stay on steady ground.

Sure enough, the corner of his mouth curls up a little, something smile-adjacent settling there as he says, "Sure. Grumpy's?"

Regina forces another smile (easier this time), and tells him, "Yeah, I could use a good scone. I'm going to go through my emails, check my schedule for the day, and then we'll figure out a time?"

"Sounds good," Sidney agrees, and the air thins, and clears, and feels breathable again.

Regina nods slightly, and turns to go, but he speaks up as she's grasping the handle on his door, and what he says makes her freeze:

"He's not good enough for you."

Her fingers tighten on the metal of the door handle; she keeps hold of it as she turns slightly and asks, "I'm sorry?"

"The neighbor," he says, and he has that same look he had on Saturday when he'd spied Robin there. Something hard that makes her stomach churn again. "He's not good enough for you. You deserve better."

Regina's tongue swipes out to wet suddenly-dry lips, and she tells him. "Sidney, Robin and I are just friends," despite the sudden memory of warm hands at her hips, in her hair, damp lips on hers, and the sunshine forest smell of him. _Not the time_ , she scolds herself, and then scolds Sidney: "But if we weren't, that wouldn't be any of your business."

Before he can draw a breath to retort, she says, "I'll let you know about lunch," and pulls the door open to beat a hasty retreat.

**.::.**

There's one thing Robin had forgotten about in this elation over the victory that was keeping Roland until Tuesday afternoons: Tuesday deliveries at the Rabbit Hole.

He could bail on August, he could, the man would understand. Roland comes first, always, and August has never questioned that. But he'd offered to help, and it's so much faster with the two of them there. And maybe he'll find some sort of alternative for next week, but for this week, he doesn't want to leave the guy high and dry.

But he also can't leave Roland unsupervised in the bar while they cart cases and kegs in and out of the back door. He's a good kid, but he's curious, and God only knows what he could get up to in the bar while Robin has his back turned.

For a few minutes, he considers trying to pawn him off on Granny Lucas for a few hours. He hasn't spent a whole lot of time with her, but she has given Roland cookies and lemonade on more than one occasion, and besides Henry will be over there. Roland loves Henry.

It's that realization that finally suggests a solution: a toddler alone in the bar is a recipe for disaster, but a toddler under the watchful eye of a reasonably responsible almost pre-teen? That's doable for an hour or two.

And besides, this is his time with Roland – he doesn't want to waste it by dumping him at someone else's house for a while, and Marian probably would never let him hear the end of it if he did.

Convincing Henry takes very little effort, and to be honest, he probably jumped the gun a bit with his offer of five dollars in babysitting fees to "come to the bar with me and keep an eye on Roland for a bit." The way Henry's face lights up at the offer, he probably would have done it for free.

But the offer's been made, and the offer's been accepted, and so at five minutes to noon, Robin is greeting August with not one, but two young boys in tow.

"You know, one of these days, the labor people are gonna come after me for all these underage workers," August ribs him, smirking as he leans against a pallet of beer cases.

Robin chuckles and then tells him, "Sorry, Marian's letting me have him until Tuesdays now, and I forgot about this until this morning."

"I could've done it alone," he says, offering a high five and a _Hey, kid_ , in return for Henry's _Hi, August!_

"I know you could've, but I said I'd be here," Robin excuses. "Anyway, Henry said he'd keep an eye on Roland. I brought a few coloring books, we'll park them at one of the tables, keep them out of the way. It's no trouble. Once we're done, I'll make a couple of grilled cheeses, run him to daycare, should be back by the start of my shift, no problem."

It's a decent plan, in theory, but it lasts all of about ten minutes. Oh, sure, they set Henry and Roland up with bottles of water, and coloring books, and crayons, and affectionate ruffles of their hair, and orders to stay put. But they've not loaded more than a case each out from the back and down into the cage before they have an audience of young, curious eyes.

"What happened to coloring?" Robin asks Henry before hefting up a case of Flying Dog; Henry just shrugs.

"He said he didn't want to color," he tells Robin. "He wants to help."

Roland nods, holding up his hands toward Robin and insisting, "My turn!"

Robin shifts his grip on the beer and says, "Sorry, my boy; these cases are too heavy for even a big lad like you. But it's very polite of you to offer. Now go on back inside, please—" he flicks his gaze to Henry "—both of you."

They don't.

Robin heads in past them, trusting that they'll listen to his instructions, and passes August on his way up the stairs as Robin makes his way down.

When he gets back to the top, there's another case of Flying Dog on the ground, the top popped open and three bottles missing. Robin scowls at it.

"Did we get short-changed or something?"

"Nah," August shrugs. "But we're almost out of those behind the bar anyway, so I figured why not make use of those of us with better knees and more energy."

A moment later, Henry and Roland come trotting out the back door, headed for the open case. Henry takes out a single longneck bottle and hands it to Roland, urging him, "Remember what I said, right?"

"Yeah, hold it tight," Roland nods, both hands wrapping snugly around the neck as he turns to head back inside at a good clip.

"No running with those!" August calls after him, and Roland's steps slow until he's measured and careful and doesn't biff it on the little lip of concrete before the back door.

Henry grabs a bottle in each hand and heads off after him, and, hell, what'll it hurt, right? He should probably scold them for utterly disregarding his request to go back inside (he thinks of both their mothers, and imagines two sets of brows raised, unimpressed with his lack of parental discipline), but August likely didn't know he'd told them no, and as long as they're being safe…

Robin hoists up another case and heads for the door, calling out "Coming through!" when he hears the slap-slap-slap of Roland's trainers approaching at a run. The boy skids to a stop and giggles at him again, pleased as punch to be helping, it seems, and Robin can't help but smile.

Still, "You have to be careful, son; you don't want to whack into me or August and get one of these dropped on your noggin, do you?"

Roland shakes his head, and says, "Nope," and Henry appears just behind him, asking how many of the Flying Dog they want behind the bar.

"That's a question for August; he knows what was there last night," Robin tells him, heading off down the stairs a moment later. He stacks his case on top of another just like it, shifts it a little until it's straight on its pile, and then heads back up, chuckling when he hears Roland call a raucous _COMING THROUGH!_ from the top of the steps.

They continue that way for a while, until all the cases and kegs are unloaded, along with the delivery of paper towels and toilet paper that arrives just before they finish with the stacks of booze they'd been working down.

By the time it's all done, Robin has broken a sweat, his arms feeling a little jelly-like and overworked.

"Better than the gym," he tells August stretching them out a little, and earning a snorting sort of scoff.

The boys are parked on barstools, sucking down seltzer water to rehydrate from their hard work. Roland is starting to droop, his eyes growing heavy from all the exertion of running back and forth, back and forth with his bottles of beer. Robin desperately hopes that he nods off the second they're in the car, and stays that way the whole way to daycare. It'll be a shit nap, time-wise, but likely all he'll get—daycare naptime will be all but done by the time they arrive.

Speaking of… He glances at his watch and winces, turns to August and gets waved off before he can even say it.

"We don't get busy until at least four; you've got some time," he assures. "Just be back by then."

"Four should be no problem," Robin assures, reaching for Roland's drink and sucking down some of it himself to slake his thirst. Roland whines, reaching for it; the nap window is rapidly dwindling into the meltdown window, from the sounds of it. Definitely time to get moving.

He tells August and Henry so, and the latter slumps a little in good-natured disappointment.

"Can I stay and help open up the bar?" Henry asks, and Robin doesn't even bother to look at August for an answer.

He just tells him, "No," and "I think your mum would kill me if I made her come to the bar again because we were using you for labor."

Speaking of… Robin reaches into his back pocket for his wallet, and fishes out a five dollar bill, passing it to Henry.

"Thanks for your help today," he tells him, winking and adding, "Maybe we'll do it again next week?"

That perks Henry right up, has his spine going straight as he grins, "Cool!"

Robin steals another sip of Roland's seltzer and gets a "Daddy, noooo," for his trouble, and then he's herding the boys into the car, buckling Roland into his car seat, and making sure Henry is well-buckled, as well.

He drops Henry back at Granny Lucas's before heading on to Roland's daycare, and says a small prayer of thanks when he glances into the rear view mirror as they reach the end of Mifflin Street.

Roland is fast asleep.

**.::.**

She doesn't know why she didn't think of this sooner.

She's been busy, and perhaps a little stubborn, and she's been convinced that advice is something she doesn't have the luxury of when it comes to Robin. How can she get any useful advice without being honest, and how can she be honest when it means spilling the beans about his criminal past?

But then the answer had come to her in three simple words after that brief phone-session with Archie: doctor-patient confidentiality.

Regina has been in therapy for most of her life (an unfortunate byproduct of growing up in Cora Mills' household, and then losing the father of her child on top of it), and while she finds it often frustrating and irritating, she also finds it productive. And she likes her therapist.

She's been seeing Dr. Hopper since she moved back to Baltimore after Daniel's death, and he's seen her through grief, and postpartum challenges, and the stress of moving out onto her own again. Through the demise of her relationship with Graham, and the struggles of single-parenting. Through the constant emotional erosion of living so close to her mother, and through the ups and downs of her dietary "issues."

She trusts him. She likes him. And more than that, right now, she likes that his duty to report isn't retroactive.

She's not sure how she didn't think of it sooner, but she's thought of it now, and as she sits in the cramped waiting room of his office, on an old, worn sofa, she finds herself actually looking forward to the next fifty minutes. Honest advice, a bit of soul searching, and no fallout for either herself or Robin. Plus, she is, admittedly, a stress case. The summer has taken its toll – between Robin, and trying to mend things with her mother, and now Sidney making her more and more uneasy… she's due for what they would normally call a "maintenance session."

She's had periods of regular therapy, times where she has gone monthly or biweekly (for a while after Daniel, after Henry was born, she'd gone weekly – if nothing else, it had provided her with an hour away from her mother every week, and provided an outlet she sorely needed after all the hours spent _with_ her). But she's been doing well for a while now, has only made appointments every now and again, when the need arises. The occasional check-in, when she finds herself struggling, or searching for some clarity. She can go two months, sometimes three, even more, without feeling the urge to make an appointment.

But she has one now, has left Henry to Granny Lucas's good keeping for a Wednesday night, and has managed to make it out of the office before six, and fight traffic, but now she's here, in this all-too-familiar waiting room, hoping that she will leave in an hour feeling better somehow. Less conflicted, and less twisted up in knots.

It's fifteen minutes past her appointment time before she gets called into Archie's office, and she tries not to be impatient, tries to afford others the grace she'd hope for herself if she needed a few minutes more to wrap things up. But she's antsy this time, a bit anxious. Wants to get this over with, get through to the other side of at least some of the things that she feels mired in right now. Wants to feel normal again, instead of constantly off-kilter. Strong instead of pathetic.

"Regina," Dr. Hopper greets her, with that gentle voice and kind smile. He looks just exactly as he always has, round glasses, and a sweater vest, and maybe a touch less hair than the last time she saw him.

And he still has the same dog, a dalmatian aptly named Pongo, who perks up immediately on his doggy bed in the corner of the room, then gets to his feet and trots over as Regina takes a seat on Dr. Hopper's old, comfortable leather sofa. Pongo settles his head on her knees, dutifully waits for her to slip him one of the doggy biscuits she'd pawned off the receptionist (as usual), and then makes those eyes that beg her to scratch him between the ears as Dr. Hopper tells her, "It's always a pleasure to see you, though, I'm guessing it's not as pleasant an experience for you. When you rescheduled your appointment last week I was worried I wouldn't be seeing you at all."

"I just had to work late, and then last week I was busy with Henry's birthday." She smiles – at the dog, and then at the doctor – and says, "And I don't know if 'pleasure' is the word I'd use, but coming here isn't torture. I'm sorry, again, for calling on a weekend."

Pongo hops up onto the sofa then, curling up in the empty place beside her with his head against her thigh. She's never been much of a pet person – horses aside – but she does have a little soft spot for dogs in general, and Pongo in particular. He's handsome, and sweet-tempered, and has soft ears she has a tendency to rub when she gets agitated, or needs to mull over a question Dr. Hopper has asked her. He's a trained therapy dog, she knows, and he's good with patients. Good with her. He shifts a little, fidgets, and adjusts his head against her, and then he lies still aside from his lazily wagging tail, lets her coast fingers along his sleek neck and shoulder.

"I'm glad to hear it wasn't anything more serious," Archie says, grabbing a notepad and pen and taking a seat in his usual chair. "And it's not a problem, that's what I have the work cell for. How did you get on with your homework?"

Regina grimaces a little, admits, "I had a migraine brewing by the time I got home. I went straight to sleep for about… two hours. And then I had that scone, and a sandwich, and I watched some British Bake Off, and took Henry out to dinner."

He's all sympathy as he tells her, "I'm sorry you weren't feeling well, but I'm not surprised given the amount of stress you were under when we spoke. The rest of your day sounds like it went a bit better though. What did you and Henry have for dinner?"

"Mexican," she answers, squinting a little, and scratching lightly along Pongo's collar as she thinks back and recalls, "He had enchiladas, I had pork tacos." And then she smirks a little and admits, "And a margarita."

Archie smiles at that, encouraging her with, "That sounds good," before taking a moment to jot something onto his notepad. She's always curious what ends up in there, but has learned there's no point in trying to sneak a peek. And then he's back with her, prompting her with their usual start: "So, why don't we get right to it. Tell me why you're here today, Regina."

She chuckles dryly, keeps her eyes on Pongo and mutters, "Where to begin..." And then she looks up at him, takes a deep breath, and says, "Things with my mother are, as you know… complicated. I'm supposed to see my parents again for Henry's birthday brunch this weekend, and I am not looking forward to it, especially after bowing out of our plans to celebrate with them _last weekend_. Mother doesn't usually let things like that go without some sort of consequence."

It occurs to her that if she's not careful this will end up an hour of deconstructing all her issues with Mommy Dearest, and they've done that before, ad nauseum. And it helps, it truly does, but it takes two to tango, so to speak, when it comes to that relationship. Or rather, it takes two to heal, and if Mother proved anything the last time they met, it's that she has no real interest in healing.

So Regina tries to change course, telling Dr. Hopper, "But I can handle Mother, I don't think I want to talk about that today."

He nods slightly, scribbles another note on his pad, and she continues, "I met a man who is good to me, and Henry, and lied to me for months to hide the fact that prior to us meeting, he had coincidentally robbed my parents – which you'd think would make me want nothing to do with him, but it doesn't. I want plenty to do with him, but I'm afraid that if my mother ever met him, she'd realize who he was and destroy him. So that didn't work out. And to ease my broken heart over his little revelation, I went out with a coworker who's been in love with me for years, realized what a mistake that was and ended things after the second date. But he is not, at all, hearing the word no, and I am worried that if he doesn't start to, my life is going to start looking like a Lifetime movie." Her shoulders lift and fall in an attempt at nonchalance, before she offers, "So. Where would you like to start, Dr. Hopper?"

"Well… that sounds like an awful lot to cover in fifty minutes." He gives her a little smile, and she smiles wryly back. _No kidding._ "So let me ask you this: the coworker, do you feel like you're in any immediate danger? Any sort of threat?"

Regina frowns, and thinks back to Monday, to lunch with Sidney. He'd tried to pay for her, and she had steadfastly refused, shoving her debit card at Leroy with a look he had gratefully understood to mean she needed him on her side in this. Unfortunately, the end result was her paying for both of them, which while it did not exactly make things feel date-like, did make things feel… decidedly un-business. But he'd been alright during lunch itself.

They'd managed to steal two of the plush chairs just as another couple was leaving, so she'd had a barrier of upholstery and a small table to keep him from trying to invade her personal space. And they'd stuck mostly to the topic of business. She'd regretted the way the depth of the chair had made her skirt rise up against her thigh when he couldn't keep his gaze from sliding to it, but he hadn't made any inappropriate _comments_ , at least…

And she'd hardly seen him at all yesterday.

So she settles on, "Not really," for her answer, explaining, "I'm uneasy, and uncomfortable, and he definitely has some boundary issues, and some trouble letting go, but… I don't feel like I'm in _danger_ , no."

"Alright," Archie says. "Then I'm going to turn the question back on you: Where would _you_ like to start, Regina? Why are you here today?"

Why is she here today. Regina drops her attention to the dog again, fingertips coasting up the back of his neck, scratching up over the top of his head and back down, nerves suddenly skittering through her belly.

She's here because he'd recommended she make the appointment, isn't she? But at the same time, no. She'd been excited, anxious, grateful just minutes ago, and there had been a solid reason why. There's no point in trying to skirt it, not here. So she bites the bullet and lifts her chin, and tells her therapist:

"I have feelings for the man who robbed my parents, and I don't know what to do about it."

"Okay, we'll start there," Archie agrees, leaning back in his chair; Regina's tempted to make a crack about settling in the for the long haul, but then Dr. Hopper is urging, "Why don't you tell me about this man?" and the moment is lost.

Where to start…

"His name is Robin," she tells him, choosing to start with the basics. With the beginning. "We met in February, when he accidentally broke into _my_ home, because he was so drunk he thought it was the home of the neighbor he's living with. I thought he was an idiot, and a drunk, and probably a terrible person. But once he sobered up, he turned out to be apologetic, and polite, and kind, and…" She has a sudden memory of him, them, sitting in the park together on the first warm-ish day of spring, knees pressed together. He'd wanted to taste her lip balm. Well, he's certainly done that…

She licks her lips (not passion fruit today, but the slight fruity sweetness of Yves Saint Laurent), and continues, "He was going through a rough patch, and we ended up talking from time to time. He has a son, Roland – he's three – and Robin hadn't been allowed to see him for a while. His girlfriend found out about what he'd done—that he'd robbed someone—and she'd kicked him out, kept him from their son, wasn't speaking to him. I met him right as things were really ending with her, and he was finally getting to spend time with Roland again." It all feels so long ago. Like another world, another time, like it could not possibly have been less than a year ago, only six months ago.

"I wanted to help him out, and Henry really liked him – I used him as emergency babysitting one night when I couldn't get our usual sitter on short notice, and he taught Henry a few chords on his guitar. He wanted to learn more, so I hired Robin to teach him, one hour a week at our place, and…" And the rest is history. She's swirling lazy circles just beneath Pongo's ear as she confesses, "...feelings developed. For both of us. But he always seemed to be holding back; I knew he liked me, at least I thought he liked me, and he was…" An idiot. A gorgeous, thoughtful, deep-dimpled, blue-eyed idiot. She thinks of eggs and salsa and avocado and tears, and says, "God, so sweet. He's an idiot, and a liar, but he's... the first person in a long time to really understand me. Or listen to me, anyway. I convinced him to go on a date with me, and he did, and it was amazing. Something still seemed off, but when I asked he said there was nothing, and... a few days later he confessed that he had robbed my parents back before Christmas, and had been keeping it from me." She feels the sting of it again, the way she does when she dwells too long, or when she has to juxtapose the Robin in her kitchen just after Mother's Day with the Robin on her sofa shattering her heart a month later. She straightens her spine a little, swallows down the faint bitterness of his betrayal, and says, "So... we ended things. That was back in June."

Dr. Hopper has been listening, not writing, and she's grateful for that. The last thing she needs is Robin's crimes officially written into her story.

"And how do you feel about things now?" he asks her, and Regina shakes her head.

"Confused. Miserable," she admits. "We ended things, but he's still in my life, and…" _Honest, just be honest,_ she tells herself. That's what this is _for_ , that's why she is _here_. So she spits it out around a tense thickness in her throat: "It's torture. Because he's still understanding, and thoughtful, and good with my son, and... we _fit_ into each other's lives so well. And he wants me, and I want him, but… we have no future, so we're not... together."

"That must be difficult for you," Archie says, "having him right next door and seeing him so often."

"It is," Regina tells him, rubbing at Pongo's ears now, the fur there silky and smooth. The dog shifts a little, lifts his head and turns to lick at her fingertips once before he settles his head back down so she can find those soft ears again. Regina smiles weakly and talks in the dog's general direction rather than Archie's. "I ask him for space sometimes, and he tries, but... he spends time with Henry and I watch his son on Monday nights now, so space is hard to come by."

"Why are you watching his son?"

His question draws her attention back up, pulls her shoulders into a simple shrug, and an even simpler answer: "Because he asked me to." Her palm settles against Pongo's neck again as she explains, "Roland's mother is letting Robin have Mondays with him, but she can't always get him before Henry's lesson, so we swap until she can pick him up. He spends so much time with Henry, it seems only fair. And Roland is a little darling, it's really not a hardship."

Archie writes _that_ down, a brow slightly furrowed as he observes, "That seems like an awfully complicated arrangement."

Regina frowns. "Not really. Why would you say that?"

"Regina, you of all people know there is a lot of trust involved in allowing someone to spend time with your child, especially unsupervised."

Liam's call comes to mind immediately – she still hasn't given him an answer. She's been delaying, has told herself she'd spot check her decision with Archie before she gave him the final go-ahead, and make sure she wasn't acting out of guilt rather than intelligence.

"Oh believe me, I know," she tells him. "Daniel's brother called on Sunday. He wants to take Henry camping over Labor Day weekend. I told him to give me a few days to think it over. I'm not wild about the idea, and I'm not sure if Henry will be either, to be honest, but I think I'm going to tell him yes. Daniel would have wanted it…"

"You used to say you wished he was more involved," Archie says, with zero hint of an opinion in either direction. How very helpful.

"I did," she agrees, and, "I do. But then he wasn't, and we got used to it. But camping is something he used to share with Daniel, and I think… it'll be good for Henry? Spending time with the only other real link to his father? I think it's right."

"He's your son, Regina," Archie tells her, in that way that she's come to learn means he's not going to offer up an opinion unless she digs for one. On the plus side, that means he doesn't think it's a _bad_ idea. "Ultimately, you know what's right. Trust your instincts."

"Right." She shakes off the mild unease she feels over the prospect, makes a mental note to call Liam and agree to the camping sooner rather than later (the temptation to make him stew a bit longer simmers in her gut, punishment for calling on short notice in the first place, but that would be petty). And then she sets the thought aside, and gets back to what's important: "Anyway, when it comes to Robin, trust isn't really our issue. And certainly not when it comes to Henry."

"Then what is the issue?" Dr. Hopper asks her.

"My mother," she reminds, because hasn't she already told him this? Isn't it obvious what the issues are? "I can't ever bring him home to my parents—lucky him. He used to install electronics, that's how he met them. He spent a whole afternoon in their house, installing their new entertainment system, helping my dad figure out his new security system – which he then used his intimate knowledge of to break in when they were on vacation." Once again, she wonders why he couldn't have robbed one of the _other_ families he no doubt spent enough time with to case the joint, so to speak. Why did it have to be _hers_? "The only thing the police were really able to glean from the investigation was that whoever did it was able to disarm the security system. If they met him and put the pieces together…" She breathes in, out. "My mother would destroy him. And he would end up in jail, and he'd never see his son, and… And if he can't ever meet my family, then we don't really have any sort of future, so what's the point?"

For a moment Archie just nods slightly, studying her, and then he asks, "In all the years you've known your mother, how often does she remember 'the help?'"

It's not at all the question she's expecting. She'd been expecting understanding, some sort of sympathy on the thing that's just out of her reach, maybe a little bit of veiled judgment for her own _lack_ of judgment in falling for someone with a criminal past, or at least some advice on how to deal with the situation. But not that.

Regina frowns, scratches her fingers lightly over Pongo's coat and admits reluctantly, "…Never."

"So why do you think she'll remember Robin?"

"I…" The word sticks in a suddenly-dry throat. She doesn't know why. It's not like Mother, he's right about that – she'd called their new gardener by the wrong name for almost eighteen months when Regina was in middle school, and he'd been there regularly. The thought has her belly twisting nervously for a reason she can't place as she shifts a little, and tells her therapist, "It doesn't matter why, it just matters that she could."

And then he asks the question that she hates, the one that he has asked her dozens of times over a dozen different things, and every time she resents it:

"What are you actually afraid of, Regina?"

"I'm afraid that she'll remember this time," she repeats. "That if I find some way to bring up Robin or what happened to see if she remembers him, it will jog her memory. Or that if I don't ask and I just bring him home trusting that she won't remember him, I'll be wrong, and she will see him, and she will remember, and then his life will be ruined, and it will be my fault. Because I was selfish and couldn't just…" She drops her gaze to a cluster of spots on Pongo's shoulder, traces the outline as she finishes guiltily, "...let him be safe."

"Do you feel like you need to keep him safe?" Dr. Hopper asks.

Regina swallows thickly and admits, "Yes."

"Why?"

Of all the stupid questions. Honestly, sometimes she thinks he toys with her, pushes her buttons just to get her to say the things he already knows.

"Because she destroys people," Regina bites, looking up at him again. "She's ruthless, and vindictive, and she won't stop until someone has been punished."

His next question hits her like a brick: "Are you worried that Cora will destroy him, or are you worried that loving you will?"

For a second, it feels like she can't breathe, and she feels the back of her eyes prickle hot, feels the tension in her throat when she manages to ask him softly, "What's the difference?"

"You are not your mother, Regina," he tells her evenly, for the thousandth time, following it up with another reassurance: "You are not what she thinks you are."

"I know," she answers softly. That cluster of spots on Pongo's shoulder looks a little bit like a snowman...

And then Archie asks, "Are you worried she's going to harm him, or change the way he sees _you_?" and at least she can be confident in her answer for that one.

"No, he's familiar with my mother," Regina tells him. "He doesn't like her, he doesn't like the way she talks to me. He cares about me, he wouldn't... change that."

That she knows, knows _absolutely_.

"Alright," Dr. Hopper says, handing her his next question with emphasis on every word: "Then _what. are. you. afraid. of?_ "

Annoyance starts to itch through her, and she remembers why she stays away from therapy for long stretches at a time. This is the part of therapy that she hates – the same question getting asked over and over again, like she hasn't offered a perfectly acceptable answer already. Like she's being deceptive, or dishonest, or just not getting her _point_ across.

So she finds another way to phrase her worries, "I'm afraid of her taking him away," and the truth of the words as she hears them leave her lips suckerpunches her in the stomach. She thinks inexplicably of a pile of birthday gifts packaged to be sent back two decades ago, and of Robin's gentle hands, and comforting smile just a few days ago, and the sudden need to protect him, to defend him, is fierce and forceful, pushing words up and out of her: "He did a very wrong thing, and he knows that, and he's paid. He hasn't gone to jail, but he's paid. I don't want him to feel her wrath." Anxiety rides a slow ascent up her spine, has her fingertips fiddling with Pongo's collar, combing over his neck, and she can't keep the resentment from her voice as she mutters, "She doesn't even care about the jewelry, she just cares about her stupid pride. She won't care that he had good reasons, she won't care that he's good to me, or that I care about him. She'll think he's nothing. Worthless. She'll crush him. And she'll enjoy it."

"And she will think less of you because you chose him," Dr. Hopper states – an observation, not a question, but she answers just the same.

"Yes," Regina whispers, clearing her throat and blinking heavily, to quell the tears that hadn't quite managed to well up. "She'll say I was stupid. And that he's beneath me. And that it's just like me to choose another 'common' man instead of someone 'worthwhile.'" An inhale, and exhale, and she grumbles, "She'll say that even if she doesn't know what he did."

"Just like she did with Daniel," Archie supplies, and Regina nods.

"Yes. And Graham. Nobody is ever good enough for her." She scoffs, a little damp, a little bitter. "But at least they weren't thieves."

"Is that what you think of him?" Archie wonders, and Regina is quick to shake her head, quick to deny.

"No. He's more than that."

So much more than that.

"Then don't you think he has a right to protect himself? That he has just as much choice in this as you?" he asks, and that's just ridiculous. What can Robin possibly do to protect himself other than stay far, far away from Regina and Cora? They don't have any other choices, there _is_ no other choice here. If there was, wouldn't she have taken it?

"He respects my decision," Regina tells her therapist. "He understands. And he doesn't know her like I do. I told him what she did – that she fired the housekeeper we've had since I was in middle school because there was no one else to blame. That she'd destroy him, he'd never see his son…" Regina scowls, and searches out silky soft ears again. "He understands."

"Hmm."

It's all Dr. Hopper says, and it irks her, tugs her attention back his way to find him looking at her in that way he does. That faux-disengagement that he knows—he _knows_ —gets under her skin.

"What?" she asks, pointedly.

"Interesting."

" _What_ is interesting?"

"You said he 'understands,'" Dr. Hopper observes. "It sounds like the two of you have an abundance of 'understanding' for two people who seem to be completely confused."

Regina feels her temper spike and snarl, her lips pressing together, eyes narrowing before she spits, "You know, right now I feel like I'm paying you an awful lot of money to tell me how stupid I am, which, frankly, I can get for free from my mother."

Archie doesn't dignify that last barb with a reply, just gives her a look, and tells her, "Regina, you are not your mother. Robin is not Daniel."

"I know that."

"It sounds like the person you're trying to protect him from is _you_ ," he says. "The you Cora has planted in your head."

"No, I need to protect him from _her_ ," she reiterates, frustration growing. Why can't he just _listen_ to her for once? Isn't that what she pays him for? And besides, he knows Cora's m.o. well by now; Regina has been sitting on this couch for ten years regaling him with tale after tale. She shouldn't have to explain it all again, but she does: "She is unforgiving, she will hurt him, and I don't want him to die."

"That's it," he insists, a little barely-noticeable surge in his posture that he gets now and then when she's landed on some kind of breakthrough. But he doesn't say anything more, and Regina finds herself scowling, replaying what she'd just said in her mind to try to catch whatever the hell revelation he's suddenly had about Cora.

 _She is unforgiving, she will hurt him, and I don't want him to—_ oh.

That's not what she had meant to…

Regina swallows thickly, her cheeks suddenly feeling warm, and then she lifts a hand to tuck her hair behind her ear, and corrects, "I meant 'go to jail.' I don't want him to go to jail."

"I don't think that was a Freudian slip," Archie tells her with a little shake of his head, and of course he doesn't.

Regina rolls her eyes, assuring, "My mother is a lot of things, but I'm pretty sure a murderer isn't one of them." A little smirk, and she adds, "Too messy."

Archie just raises a brow, not amused by her snark in the slightest. What's new? And then he does another obnoxious therapist thing that she hates: he waits. Doesn't say anything, just sits there, and looks at her, and waits. She hates the waiting, hates the stretch of silence. She's not normally one who can't stand the quiet, but for some reason here, in this room, when she is paying minute by minute for the _pleasure_ of his conversation, the silence irks her. It stretches and stretches, until she feels a compulsive need to fill it.

And when she feels that need, she says stupid, revelatory things. Things like what she says now, following him down this rabbit hole, even though what she'd said before about Robin dying was just a slip, just a misspoken… something.

"I know that what happened to Daniel wasn't my fault," Regina says. (They have been over this, and over this, and over this, and sometimes it even feels true when she says it. Not today, but sometimes.)

"But you haven't let anyone else in since then," he reminds her, "And before you say Graham, we both know that was not the same."

Regina presses together lips that had just parted to bring up that very name, but he's right. She cared very much for Graham, but she can't remember ever having the desperate depth of feeling she has now about what's happening with Robin. Of course, Graham didn't rob her parents, keep it from her, get her to fall for him, lie to her about it, and then confess it all once she'd already gotten attached. So. There's that.

But it irks her nonetheless, this theory that she's letting her issues with Daniel interfere with her issues with Robin. They're two different men, and two different parts of her heart, and the idea that she can't keep them from bleeding together, well, it's bullshit, and she's going to tell him so. With a raised brow, and crossed arms, and a suitable amount of derision.

"So, what?" she challenges, her tone making her feelings about the suggestion perfectly clear, "You think I'm making up excuses not to be with Robin because I'm afraid I'll lose him like I lost Daniel?"

"Aren't you?"

Regina grits her teeth for a second, and then bites out, "No," resentment rising up her middle. "I have very real reasons not to be with Robin, I just don't know how to get _past_ that and stop feeling this way all the time without him." And just in case he has forgotten, she says to him, "That is why I am here. Not to talk about Mother, or Daniel; I just need to figure out how to get past this, and be friends, just friends. That's what I want."

"Hmm," Archie says, and then, "How's Henry?"

The conversational whiplash throws her (it was meant to, no doubt, and that irritates her too), has her brain stuttering so the only response she can manage is, "What?"

"How's Henry?" he repeats.

"He's… good," she answers slowly. "Great, even. What does Henry have to do with any of this?"

"How does he feel about Robin?" Dr. Hopper asks. "You mentioned they spend a lot of time together."

Oh. So not so much whiplash as a hard merge into a new lane of traffic. Same highway, different exit.

But this is much more comfortable, this topic, and she can't help a lopsided smile as she says, "He adores him."

"You've always said you wanted Henry to have a steady male presence in his life. His uncle hasn't often been present in the way you'd like, and Graham didn't last."

"Yes…" she confirms cautiously, waiting for him to elaborate.

"This 'understanding' you have with Robin, how does that work with Henry?"

"It's... fine," Regina answers with a shrug. "They have their relationship, and we have ours. And I don't want our problems to interfere with their relationship, so... they don't. They have their lessons once a week, and I know Henry goes over there a lot during the day when Robin's not at work. Henry likes him; Robin doesn't treat him with kid gloves, and he really looks up to him. I think it's good for him, having someone he can emulate."

"Is that something you've noticed in his behavior?" he asks, "Has Henry been emulating Robin?"

She smiles again before she can help it, lips curving at a recent memory: "Yes. We were at the park two weeks ago, the two of us and Robin and his son. It was during that heat wave, so I took a little break to cool off—sat in the shade for a few minutes and had some water—and when I looked up, Robin had taken his shirt off and tucked it in his back pocket. And so had Henry. I don't think he's _ever_ taken his shirt off at the park, but there he was with it tucked in the back of his pants. Just like Robin. He hasn't had anyone to look up to like that since Graham. Not really. Daniel's gone, Liam's an eight hour drive away, and I don't think my dad counts. Grandpa isn't really 'cool,' you know?"

Archie smiles a little at that, jotting something into his notes as he asks, "But Robin is 'cool?' Is that something you're comfortable with given the complications in your relationship?"

"As long as we can protect Henry from the truth, yes," Regina says, glancing down at the dog as he adjusts himself slightly on the sofa cushion. "He's a good man. And he's good to my son, and me. He's not perfect, but nobody is, and I am a walking example of what happens when you expect perfection." Neuroses. Resentment. Thousands and thousands of dollars in therapy. "I don't want Henry to think he has to be perfect to be good, or worthwhile, or cared about."

"How do you plan on protecting Henry from the truth?" Archie wonders.

She shrugs a little. "I won't tell him, and I know Robin won't. Nobody knows. Just me, and Robin, his ex, and I'm pretty sure his roommate. I haven't told anyone else. I haven't been able to talk to anyone about any of this until today. Except him."

"Are you comfortable keeping something like that from Henry?" Dr. Hopper asks, his head cocked curiously. "What if Robin is in your life for an extended period of time? Are you comfortable lying to Henry to keep him from knowing the truth?"

"It's not lying. It's protecting him," she argues, her just-settled hackles rising at the accusation that she's lying to her child. Even though she is. A little. But it's different, it's necessary, some omissions of fact are necessary, this isn't just… lying. She's lived with a lying parent, this is not some sort of malicious dishonesty.

"By withholding the truth," Dr. Hopper reiterates, and Regina's jaw presses tight for a second.

She can hear the defensiveness in her own voice when she says, "Look, I didn't intend for him and Robin to get so close, but they did. And I don't want to ruin that for him. So if it means that I... _withhold some information_ …" She purses her lips, shrugs her shoulders. "Comfortable isn't the word I'd use, but it's acceptable to me. Kids don't need to know the worst of the adults in their lives, do they?"

He doesn't answer, just makes this face – brows rising, mouth dropping into a frown, just for a second. She can't tell if he's conceding her point, or if he disagrees and is letting it slide.

When he speaks, it's another question: "Do you all spend time together, the three of you? Meals or...?"

"Time together, sometimes – like that day at the park, and he came to Henry's party. But meals, no." She thinks of chicken tacos and far too much honesty in her kitchen, painful confessions in her laundry room. That doesn't count, she decides. Spending time with his ex surely isn't the kind of quality time Dr. Hopper is talking about. So she adds, "Not anymore. We used to, before I found out what he did, but not really since then."

"Have any of your other eating habits changed?" he asks, and she should have seen that one coming from the last question. She's been away too long and has come back with too much junk to wade through for him not to at least spot-check her eating habits.

"I have good days and bad," Regina admits. "More good than bad."

"It sounds as though you're under quite a bit of stress."

Regina snorts, and thinks, _Understatement_.

"I am. This whole thing with Robin has been…" Taxing. Miserable. Hell. Those all seem a bit melodramatic, so she just repeats, "I am."

"Is Robin aware of some of the more... _challenging_ things you face?" Dr. Hopper asks, politely dancing around the two words she prefer they not use unless they absolutely have to.

"Yes and no," Regina answers. "I haven't flat out _told_ him, and I don't think he really _understands_ my issues, but he's not blind." She thinks of cold beer and Harry Potter, and kisses gone way too far, but the thought of his hand down her pants with her son only a few thin walls away has even more shame burning through her belly than the sweaty-palmed anxiety of trying to choke down a longneck during an anxiety attack, so she steers clear of that particular example. There are better ones anyway – one better one, anyway. That night, The Night, the one he'd cemented himself a spot right in the middle of her battered heart.

That she thinks she can talk about, so she does, telling Archie. "He was over once, after Mother had spun my head around. Henry had wanted pizza, and I ordered it for all of us, and I just… couldn't eat it. I picked at it until Henry was done, but that was it. She had ripped me apart over brunch the day before—in front of Henry—and I was still reeling. I couldn't stomach something like pizza after she'd told me how I was 'pooching a bit at the hips.' Henry didn't notice, but Robin did, and I'd been on the treadmill before dinner, so he said he'd make me something else while I showered. I came back down and he'd made me this plate. This perfect plate of safe foods, and I think that's the moment I—" There's a word on the tip of her tongue, one she half-hears before it makes its way past her lips, but she manages to head it off and change course. Her heart knocks hard in her chest, her throat, when she says, "That's when I knew I wanted him. That's when I thought maybe this could go somewhere real. He doesn't know what I've been through, but he's encouraging, he doesn't judge, he makes me feel good about myself – physically, at least. And emotionally. Our situation is stressful, but he makes me feel beautiful, and interesting, and… wanted." Just the thought of it, of the way he makes her feel when he's not making her feel miserable, is enough to slow that knocking heart, enough to warm her middle. Enough for her to offer Dr. Hopper a knowing, "It's nice to have a man who's attracted to you."

He smiles at that, and she smiles back. He has someone – a partner he's had for as long as Regina has been seeing him. He doesn't offer _too_ much of his own personal life in these sessions, but she knows a little. Enough. Knows that he met a man on vacation in Italy just over a decade ago, who cooks, and grows prized roses in their backyard, and who once fixed an old heirloom clock that Regina had lamented during a session had been broken at the clumsy, curious hands of her then-preschooler.

So it's with no small amount of camaraderie that Dr. Hopper agrees, "Yes, it is."

"He's like a little antidote to the intrusive thoughts," Regina muses on Robin. "Mother may think I'm fat, but Robin can't keep his eyes off me in shorts, so…" She shrugs a little, still smiling. "Everything going on with him hasn't been very triggering. When my… _issues_ … do flare up, he's comforting. Mother and Sidney are more likely to bring on bad days."

"Sidney?"

"The coworker."

"Ah, the one who's having trouble letting go," he recalls, and Regina pulls in a deep breath and lets it rush out.

As she's confirming, "The very same," the old clock on the opposite side of the room chimes softly. It's set to be fifteen minutes off, chiming in at exactly forty-five minutes past the hour – a five-minute warning before her time is up.

Those forty-five minutes went fast this week.

"I want to talk about that, but I'm afraid we don't have much time to delve into it today," Dr. Hopper tells her apologetically, scribbling another something on his notepad with a little more urgency than before. "So I'd like to see you again, soon, to discuss everything else. Next week?"

Regina sighs, and laments, "I suppose it was a pipe dream that my mess of a life could be sorted out in one maintenance session."

"We all have messy lives, Regina," Dr. Hopper assures, his voice warm and friendly as he ribs her, "Next time, don't stay away so long."

"Yeah," she scoffs.

Pongo knows the meaning of the chimes, too, and he rolls onto his back, baring his tummy in a last ditch plea for a good belly rub. Regina obliges, glancing up when Archie continues talking.

"If you'd like, we could go back to regular appointments for a while," he suggests, "just until things are settled. I'm willing to come in on a Saturday, as I've done in the past, if that's what works best – I know weeknights aren't always ideal for you."

Nothing is really ideal for her, single parenting and all. At least on weekends, she can send him to Robin's. Maybe shouldn't, but definitely can.

Still, 'regular appointments' sounds like a commitment—both of time and emotions. It also sounds a bit like failure. Regular appointments were how they began, when Daniel was gone. It was what they went back to when she started working after two years of stay-at-moming, when she moved out on her own again, and after things went south with Graham, and the… well, alright, the last time she and Mother had a rough patch as bad as the one they're currently in.

Still, "I don't think I need that," she insists, although there's a small voice in the back of her brain that adds _Even though I feel better for having talked all this out for an hour_. So she compromises, sort of, offering, "Or… I'll think about it. Maybe monthly, for a little while."

Monthly is reasonable. Monthly is maintenance. Monthly is not some sort of failure of mental health or self-control.

Archie responds with, "If that feels sufficient to you," in a way that manages to be neutral but still somehow hesitant and doubtful. Do they teach that particular tone in medical school, she wonders?

Regina straightens her shoulders, asking, "You think it's not?"

"I think today was good, but we certainly aren't stopping because we've run out of conversation," he tells her. She can't really argue that one. "And I suspect that if we spend your next session discussing this situation with your coworker, we may run out of time to address your mother. And given the way our recent phone conversation went, I think Cora is an area in your life we need to address in depth."

That's two more sessions, three solid weeks of therapy. Of carving out time in her week to come here and scrape open itchy, painful wounds (she'll have more by the end of the weekend, she's sure of it). The thought is not a welcome one; she scowls, purses her lips, brushes hair back from her face, and says, "I don't need weekly appointments; I'm not in crisis."

"I didn't say that you are," Dr. Hopper tells her gently – just shy of patronizing, if you ask her. "But you do seem to be particularly burdened right now, and you know how important it is to manage your stress levels."

Her brows lift and fall; she has to concede that one. There have been more good days than bad lately, but she is not unaware of her bad moments. Her hard moments. Of the anxiety that keeps her up at night, the lunch she'd skipped yesterday because she was 'too busy' when really, if she's honest, truly honest, she has to admit that she'd stepped on a scale for the first time in weeks to find she'd gained two pounds again and, well, Mother will have something to say about that on Sunday.

So maybe a little bit of semi-regular therapy wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Just until she feels a little steadier on her feet when it comes to Mother, and Sidney, and Robin.

"Today has helped, I think. Just being able to talk to someone about Robin – someone _other_ than Robin. I haven't been able to do that; I didn't want to get him hurt."

The last word sticks a little, the confession squeezing the wind out of her. She hears _too fast around a curve_ and _the rain_ and the dull bee-swarm buzzing of shock, and has to take in a slow breath and breathe the memories out. He's watching her, his expression pleasantly blank, but she can see in Dr. Hopper's eyes that she hasn't hidden the moment of anxious grief terribly well. So okay, alright, that may mean there's some more to mine here.

"I'll make another appointment for this weekend, if that's okay," she concedes, "and we'll go from there."

Maybe if she can just get it all out in one go, rip the Band-Aid off, talk through all of this as soon as possible, then she'll be able to get back to life as normal. Clear-headed and calm, cool and collected, and without the penchant for jumping her neighbor whenever she's alone with him and upset.

Dr. Hopper tells her, "Alright," and, "See Belle on your way out; she'll put you on the calendar."

Regina nods, agrees, "Great," and is giving Pongo one last scratch before he takes the cues from her body language and moves to hop down from the couch as she reaches for her purse.

"Regina—"

Or not. She pauses, hand poised to wrap around the handle of her pocketbook, and looks up at Archie, who says, "I'm going to say it again: You are not your mother, and this man is not Daniel. I want you to really think on what is holding you back."

It has her scowling, and reiterating once _again_ , "I told you."

"Yes, you did. Think on it anyway."

Regina exhales heavily and finally grabs her purse, slinging the strap up onto her shoulder as she tells him, "I hate when you give me homework."

Dr. Hopper just smiles and says, "I'll see you this weekend."


	35. Chapter 35

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The songs featured in this chapter are listed in the end notes.

By the time Regina pulls into the parking lot of The Rabbit Hole on Thursday evening – only five minutes before Robin's set is supposed to start and twenty minutes after she'd planned to be there – all she wants is a strong drink and a quiet night.

Today has been… taxing, to say the least.

It had started off with an impressive gift basket of artisan coffee resting on her desk chair – which she'd immediately brought to the break room and donated to the office, catching Sidney's hopeful eye with a disappointed glare of her own as she'd deposited the basket on the countertop unceremoniously – and had ended with a conversation with Leo that still has her insides wriggling with unease.

And it hasn't escaped her memory that the last time she came to see Robin play, she'd gotten embarrassingly drunk and ended up in this mess in the first place. She's been thinking about that night all day, about their meandering walk home, and her bruised heart, and his warm lips.

She's been thinking a lot today, about him, and she blames Dr. Archibald Hopper. Blames _What are you really afraid of?_ and _How often does your mother remember the help?_

Therapy has gotten under her skin the way it sometimes does, and it annoys her, has her feeling itchy and off-kilter, and, quite frankly, has her wanting a bit of space from Robin. Some time to think and self-reflect and all that garbage before she has to deal with the sight of him with a guitar slung over his shoulder.

At least this time she has Henry to think about, something to keep her from getting too distracted or too inadvertently drunk.

She spots him at a table right near the front (of course), but thankfully off to the side – something she's sure has to do with the fact that he's sitting with John, who is by no means a small man. He's taken the outside chair out of politeness, no doubt, but it means she has to scoot in to reach the only open seat that won't have her back to Robin.

"Hi, Mom!" Henry greets as she slips into her seat, looking every bit as excited as she would expect him to. "I was worried you were gonna be late."

She _is_ late, but she smiles at him anyway, and says, "I promised I'd be here before it started," and then looks up to John and tells him, "Thanks for bringing him. Those end-of-day meetings…" She trails off with a roll of the eyes that she hopes makes her frustration clear.

"Yeah," he commiserates with a lift of his beer. He swallows down a gulp of it, and then says, "You can have this seat if you don't want to have to sit sideways all night – I can take a spot at the bar."

He jerks his head back toward it and Regina looks beyond him. Robin is at the bar, with Tink and a couple of other people she doesn't know. If she had to wager a guess, they're probably the bandmates he'd mentioned earlier in the week, asking if they could use her driveway for a little bit of overflow parking during the day when they'd come over. He's in a black t-shirt that she would not call tight, but she can see the shift of his muscles as he tips back the longneck he's holding; Regina decides it's unfair for him to be so attractive in a _t-shirt_.

Her heart knocks hard when he glances her way and manages to somehow lock eyes with her across the expanse of the room. She feels a flush up the back of her neck, embarrassed to be caught staring, and then some blessed stranger walks through their field of view. Regina takes the moment to look away, clearing her throat a little and telling John, "Well, we wouldn't want to keep you." (Henry lets out a disappointed _Aw, man_ …) And then, "But you're welcome to stay, if you'd like." (That one earns her a _Yes!_ And John a _Please?_ )

"If you're sure you don't mind," John says, and Regina nods, insists that she can see just fine.

And then Ruby is there, appearing from between two tables like magic, and greeting Regina with a smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes (Regina remembers that she's not the only one about to watch a someone-of-importance spend a night onstage and feels a sort of kinship with Ruby she probably shouldn't.)

"Hey," she says, "I already got these guys, but do you want any dinner? Drinks?"

"Drinks, definitely," Regina says without thinking, and then she sneaks a glance at Henry, finding him sipping his Coke and thankfully oblivious.

"Vodka soda?" Ruby asks, a knowing little smirk on her face now. It's her go-to cocktail if she intends to _drink_ , and she imagines the last time Ruby served them to her all night probably made an impression.

But it also made an impression on _Regina,_ so she grimaces a little and instead requests, "Bulleit Rye, neat – just one. And a cider."

"Draft or bottle?"

"Do you have…" She frowns, tries to remember what Robin had given her the last time she was here, with Sidney. It had been good, a little spicy, and the name had been something one isn't likely to forget – so of course she's forgotten it. "Last time I was here, Robin gave me something, it was in a bottle, um—"

"Dirty Mayor," supplies an all-too-familiar voice, and then there he is, squeezing past Ruby and slipping into the empty chair at their table.

"Yes," Regina says slowly, wishing his presence didn't make her feel so suddenly awkward, and cursing Dr. Hopper one more time for good measure. She turns her attention back to Ruby, but is still acutely aware of the way Robin reaches over and flicks Henry's balled up straw wrapper in his direction, making her son giggle. "And, um, a grilled chicken burger, no cheese. Fries. Side of barbeque."

It's a lot of food, especially when she's feeling as wound as she is in this exact moment, but she had a light lunch, and she'll be hungrier once she's settled in, she thinks. She hopes.

"You got it," Ruby confirms, tapping her pen against her order pad and then telling Robin, "Break a leg up there," earning one of his megawatt smiles and a thank-you before she leaves.

Henry flicks the straw wrapper back at Robin and hits him smack in the chest. Robin just smirks.

"I was worried you wouldn't make it," he tells Regina, shifting his gaze her way, that smirk warming, softening around the edges.

Regina's own lips curl automatically in response before she tamps down the progression of her smile and tucks her hair behind her ear, shrugging a little as she says, "I'm here."

"I'm glad," he tells her, and then something catches his eye across the bar and he inhales swiftly and says, "I've got to go, I just wanted to say hi."

"Break a leg!" Henry tells him enthusiastically, and then adds, "But not really. Why do people say that anyway?"

"Because the other thing is supposed to be bad luck," Robin chuckles, pushing himself to his feet and leaning over into Regina's space so he can drop his voice and mutter, "Everything alright?"

She feels a little bubble of resentment that he can see right through her, that her careful veneer of calm is so useless on him, or at least that today it's so poorly drawn. Her smile is tight when she excuses, "Long day."

He nods slightly, and murmurs, "Well, it's over now. So relax, enjoy. I promise you won't need anyone to walk you home this time."

It probably shouldn't make her laugh, but it does, easing the tension in her chest and pulling up a chuckle in its place. "Oh, good," she teases, and his smile widens. She is suddenly acutely aware of how good he smells this close.

And then he straightens, his hand squeezing her shoulder as he leaves and somehow hitting a knot there in a way that just makes her crave another, oh, twenty minutes or so of those strong, squeezing fingers against where she's tight and tense.

She really needs that drink.

She watches him go (he's in jeans, she can see now – jeans that fit very, very well), and then turns back to find John smirking at her. She probably hadn't needed to watch Robin walk away _quite_ so intently or for so long.

John looks like he wants to say something, but then he glances at Henry, and just swallows another mouthful of beer; Regina has never been more grateful for young ears.

Embarrassment heats her cheeks, only getting worse when her traitorous brain remembers the _last_ time he'd seen them together. What did Robin tell him that night, she wonders? And did he tell him about Sunday? About stolen kisses in the middle of a _birthday party_? God, maybe she should have told John to go to the bar after all.

Regina presses a hand to her suddenly churning belly and regrets those fries she's just ordered.

"He was worried you'd decide not to come," John says then, and Regina scowls slightly.

"Of course we came!" Henry insists, as if the very idea that they wouldn't is preposterous. "We wouldn't miss Robin's gig."

"Well," Regina begins slowly, lifting a hand to comb through the hair above his ear, smoothing an unruly lock of Daniel's sandy brown. "It's not really Robin's, it's Tink's. He's just playing tonight, remember?"

"Yeah, but it's still important to him," Henry reasons, and she nods, and agrees.

"It is. Which is why we're here." She flicks her gaze to John and says, "I told him we would be."

John nods, and points out, "And then Henry showed up with someone else again." Regina's lips purse slightly, and she's about to remind him just exactly _why_ that happened, but he speaks first, saying, "I'm just saying – he was being kind of an idiot about it earlier, so I'm glad you made it before they started. If it wasn't for you, he wouldn't be doing this again – if he wasn't teaching Henry, if he didn't have a guitar. He wants you to see what you've done for him."

"Oh," she breathes, all that ire having melted straight down and out through the rickety legs of her chair, leaving behind a stunned sort of surprise. She'd never… She hadn't really considered…

August takes the stage just as Ruby sets Regina's drinks down in front of her with a wink, and the flurry of activity, the smattering of applause and a loud whoop from the back of the bar, Henry's _They're starting!_ and her absent nod in response – they all fight for Regina's attention, but it's stuck for a moment, lingering on _He wants you to see what you've done for him_ , and she feels a well of some kind of _feeling_ spring up through her middle.

She reaches for her bourbon and takes a warm, burning sip of it, letting it spread out through her empty belly. And then August has finished introducing Tink, and the band is taking the stage.

She'd been right earlier – about the people at the bar with Robin. The blonde girl appears to be on bass; the dark-haired man with the scruffy beard (and more rings than Regina thinks any man has any business wearing) takes his place behind the drums as Tink adjusts the mic and greets the crowd.

But Regina, Regina looks at Robin. Watches the way he slips the strap of his guitar over his head (it's his new Les Paul; he'd gone with a solid black, it seems). He bites his lip slightly as he fiddles with it; he looks _right_ , looks comfortable but maybe a bit nervous, and she finds herself smiling slightly.

If this is her doing in any way, she's glad for it.

He glances up, finds her gaze again like a magnet, and smiles at her. Regina nods and gives him a little wink for encouragement; his smile widens.

As Tink starts to sing something uptempo and rousing, Regina finds herself grateful for the slightly dimmed lighting, for the way Henry's attention has tied itself to the action onstage. It gives her a moment to decompress, to sip at her bourbon again and watch idly as Robin's fingers move across frets and strings, letting the alcohol loosen the tension she's been carrying since she'd walked into Leo's office this afternoon, and sat down for a conversation she'd hoped would go much differently than it had.

**.::.**

_The coffee had been the last straw. She'd tried to be polite, she'd tried to be very clear, she'd tried to be everything but downright rude in order to get Sidney to see that he needs to stop all of this, but none of it seems to have stuck. So this afternoon, she'd watched the clock, waiting with a little ball of nerves in her gut for the small hand to tick past five._

_One of the TLK reps was passing through town this week, and Sidney had offered to take him out for some pre-dinner drinks tonight – something she had begged off of, claiming other plans (and she'd had other plans, Robin's gig, she'd said they'd be there and so they would be)._

_But knowing he was gone also provided her with the perfect opportunity to swallow her pride and do a little bit of mortified pleading._

_She tries not to use this connection often, she has tried for her entire tenure at the Blanchard Group to pave her own way, to excel on her merits, not on nepotism. Her mother may have gotten her in the door, but Regina was the one who walked through it and set up shop, and she didn't want the connections between the Mills and Blanchard families to ever be a source of resentment in the office._

_But desperate times call for desperate measures, and so at 5:05 she'd been knocking on Leo's open office door, and asking, "Do you have a minute to talk?" lowering her voice slightly to add, "It's sort of… sensitive."_

_Leo had given her a baffled little smile and waved her in, telling her, "I always have time for a Mills woman," and, "Come on in, sit down."_

_Regina had thanked him, stepping into the office and shutting the door behind her before crossing the spacious room, and smoothing the snug, indigo material of her skirt before sinking into the chair across from his desk._

_Faced with the idea of having to actually say all of this to someone who is neither Robin nor a paid mental health professional had had her growing suddenly even more nervous, anxious nausea forcing a thick swallow from her. God, what if he told Mother?_

_No, that's silly. He wouldn't do that. He's a professional, this is a professional matter. Sort of._

_She hadn't realized how long she'd spent psyching herself up until Leo had asked, "Is everything alright? You look nervous."_

" _I am," she'd admitted, telling him, "I didn't want to— This is—" Or_ trying _to tell him anyway. She'd taken a deep breath in, blown it steadily out, and confessed, "I need your help with something."_

" _With a client?"_

" _Not exactly. With… a coworker," she'd grimaced. "I know that you know I went on a couple of dates with Sidney Glass."_

_The soft frown he'd been wearing as he'd waited for her to get to the point had morphed into a smile then, pleased and knowing, and twisting Regina's guts into even tighter knots._

" _So I heard," he'd said. "And things are going well, I hope?"_

_Regina had linked her fingers together in her lap, lacing them to keep the urge to fidget at bay as she'd informed him, "Things aren't going at all, actually. I ended it after the second date."_

_His face had fallen at that, and he'd let out a quiet, "I see," that had held an air of disappointment somehow reminiscent of her mother. Did they teach that at the Club, she wondered? Was it something that came with the annual membership?_

_She'd felt suddenly small, and foolish, had wanted to explain herself._

" _I don't usually date at work. And I know Sidney has been interested in me for a while, and I've always tried to… keep things professional. But he asked at just the right moment on just the right day, and I said yes."_

_Leo had listened, had steepled his hands, fingertips resting at his lips the way he does as he listens to progress reports that particularly displease him, and Regina had wondered if maybe this had been a bad idea._

_But she didn't have many good ideas left, and she'd thought maybe this one could resolve everything with some grace and kindness, so she'd soldiered on, admitting, "But I shouldn't have. I realized that, and I told him that I thought we should keep our professional relationship professional. And he said he was fine with that, but…" She'd winced and gotten to the crux of the issue: "He keeps giving me gifts, leaving things at my desk, or…" She'd almost brought up the birthday party, but had stopped just short, deciding the specifics weren't important. What was important had been, "I've asked him to stop, several times; I've told him it's inappropriate for the workplace, that I don't want people to get the wrong idea, especially since we're on so much business together. But at least once a week, I get something from him."_

" _He admires you," Leo had said from behind the tips of his fingers._

" _Yes," she'd agreed slowly, because, well, that was obvious. "But it needs to stop. And he's not hearing me."_

" _Maybe you should be more direct," Leo had suggested._

" _I've been pretty clear," Regina had told him. "Short of doing my best impression of my mother, I don't know how I could be any clearer. And I don't want to be unkind."_

_Leo had not cracked the smile she'd hoped anyone familiar with her mother would have, and he'd let out a soft little "Hmm," before asking, "You said you needed my help?" his hands releasing and sinking back down to rest on the arms of his chair._

_It's an imposing, brass-studded leather executive chair, high-backed and (in her opinion) oddly out of place with the rest of the office's modern decor. More than once in the time he's had it, she's heard Leo refer to it as his throne, and it had felt very much that way this afternoon. Like she'd sought audience with the King to beg favor._

_It had been an odd feeling to associate with him. There's always been a certain sort of detached affection – or at the very least, a mutual familiarity – between them that had made him feel more approachable than she imagines your average CEO would be. He's a friend of the family, a friend of her mother's, he's known Regina since she was a spindly sixteen year old._

_But just then, he'd felt very much the CEO, and she'd felt heat creep up the back of her neck as she'd cleared her throat and said, "Well, I know you're friends – you and Sidney. I was hoping maybe you could speak to him? As our boss, and as a friend. Let him know that he needs to stop. Really needs to stop."_

" _I see," he'd said evenly, and then he'd tilted his head a little, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. "So you want me to fix your problems?"_

_The phrasing and the tone – none too pleased and a little disbelieving – had both thrown Regina for a loop, and she'd floundered a little as she'd tried to clarify, "I… I want you to help me… fix my problem."_

_It hadn't helped._

_Instead, Leo had needlessly pointed out, "Regina, I think everyone in this office, yourself included, is well aware that Sidney has had eyes on you for a very long time," and that heat on the back of her neck had spread to her cheeks as she'd realized that, yes, this had been a bad idea. "If you didn't want to date him, why did you agree to it?"_

" _I was going through a hard time," she'd tried to explain to him, feeling stupider with every word that left her mouth. "I made a bad choice."_

" _He's a good man," Leo had told her, and she'd had a sinking feeling of disappointment that it appeared even_ Leo _was going to attempt to get her to give Sidney another chance. "He cares for you."_

" _I know he does," she'd said, and, "He's a great guy. He's just… a little pushy right now. And you're our boss—"_

" _Yes," Leo had cut her off, his voice a little bit harder. "I am." When he'd added, "I'm your boss, not your guidance counselor," she'd felt an acute need to flee from her rapidly rising mortification, pressed her lips together hard to quell it. "This is a personal matter, it's none of my business unless it's affecting my business. Are you saying you can't work with him anymore?"_

_His question had sent her head shaking, had had her insisting that, "No, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that I'm uncomfortable. And I've tried to very diplomatically deal with it myself, and it hasn't worked. So I'm asking you, as my boss, as a longtime friend of my family, and a friend of Sidney's, if you can just speak to him, and help him see that he needs to let this go."_

_Leo had let out a miniscule little sigh, and said, "Regina, when I hired you, it wasn't because of your mother."_

_In light of her last conversation with her mother, the statement had bolstered her more than it probably should have, but the boost had been short lived as he'd continued, "It was because you were bright, and driven, and I thought you'd be a good asset to this team. And I've been very careful to let you make your own way, without any favors from me, without any favoritism from me."_

" _I know," she'd assured him, "and I appreciate that."_

_But he'd stepped on her assurances in a way that made her feel like she was shrinking rapidly, his "I'm not finished," hitting her like swallowing a Wonderland mushroom, and every word after had made her feel more and more insignificant, "I've known your family for decades, I've worked closely with your mother. But I reward on merit, and am not here to clean up your messes—"_

" _I'm not asking—" she'd tried to tell him, but it had been no good._

_He'd insisted, "Yes, Regina, you are," and she'd snapped her mouth shut, dumbfounded. "Now, I'm sorry that you got yourself into a position that is uncomfortable for you, but quite frankly, you knew full well how Sidney felt when you went dipping your pen in the company ink."_

_Her mortification had surged again, and she'd lifted a hand to tuck her hair behind her ear, awkwardly informing him, "There was no… dipping. Just two dinners. And I know he had feelings; I admit it was a mistake."_

" _Not mine," Leo had told her simply. "Deal with it on your own time. Do your work on my time."_

_There had been nothing left to say but a very foreign, "Yes, sir. I'm sorry; I thought—"_

" _You thought I'd take your side because I've known you since you were in Bryn Mawr plaid," he'd told her, and he hadn't been entirely wrong, no. "But while you've been a wonderful employee, you've never made an effort to make yourself particularly special to me. If you'd wanted special treatment, perhaps you should have considered ways to earn my favor."_

_She'd scowled at that, stung by the claim that she was nothing special (you'd think after thirty-five years with Cora she'd be used to hearing it, but somehow she isn't), a traitorous prickle tingling at the back of her eyes as he'd ordered, "Handle it yourself, Regina."_

_Humiliation thoroughly complete, Regina had tried to scrape up what was left of her dignity, muttering, "Right. Okay," and, "I'm sorry," as she'd risen to her feet, her now-sweaty palms smoothing over her hips anxiously again as she'd offered up one last request: "Please don't mention this to Sidney. I'll…" Literally die of mortification if anyone else knows she was dumb enough to let this conversation occur. "I'll talk to him myself."_

" _You do that," Leo had told her coolly. She'd turned to leave, couldn't make it to the door fast enough, but he'd stopped her with a calm, "And Regina?"_

" _Yes?" She'd stopped, turned to face him again._

" _He's one of my top earners," Leo had reminded her, and then he'd put one more dent in her with, "Do not jeopardize that just because you couldn't think past your own ego."_

_Her cheeks had flushed again as she'd promised, "I won't. I've been trying very hard not to."_

" _Try harder," he'd insisted, and then he'd given her a tight half-smile and told her to, "Have a good night."_

_Like he hadn't just politely eviscerated her._

_All she'd managed was a tight, "You too," as she'd headed for the door, and then back to her desk, to attempt to patch her pride back together and finish up the few things she had left on her agenda before she could head out to Robin's gig._

**.::.**

Something's bothering her.

He shouldn't be paying attention to her, should be paying attention to the job he is being paid to do, the job he loves, but he's never been very good at ignoring her pain, and anyway he's well-rehearsed. And something is _bothering_ her.

He hopes it's not him, not them, that has her sitting there all pensive in her seat, robotically dipping fries in sauce and bringing them to her mouth one at a time.

Hopes it's just that long day she'd mentioned that's responsible for snatching away the good mood she'd seemed to have for him as they'd taken the stage. She'd been smiling at him, had even thrown him a little wink just as they were about to start – or tried to, anyway. Regina doesn't so much wink as blink a bit lopsided, and the few times he's seen her do it, it never fails to make him smile.

But she's a million miles away now, deep in thought, and by the looks of it, not particularly good ones. He'll try to pull her aside later, between sets, and see if he can draw any more out of her.

That's what friends do, right? Lend a supportive ear, a comforting shoulder…

She shifts a little in her chair, turns slightly toward Henry, and Robin skims his gaze down her bare arms, the loose black top she's wearing and the anything-but-loose dark colored skirt. It's blue maybe, or purple. Something dark, but not black, he thinks. Hard to tell from up here, but he _can_ tell that it hugs her like a second skin, and he's a little disappointed he didn't manage to see her walk in.

And then he shakes away the thought, reminding himself that such thoughts are _not_ what friends do. They're what leads to a good snog in a back room, and while he thoroughly enjoys such things, she's made it pretty clear that's not what she wants right now.

So he forces his attention away from her, removes the temptation and the distraction, and zones in on the music. The cadence and the comfort, the blending of his own instrument and voice with the ones around it.

He's missed this – hadn't realized quite how much until the last few days when they'd all been rehearsing together. He knows Tink's hand will heal, she'll have a guitar in it in no time, but he can't help the tiny flicker of hope in his chest that she'll decide maybe Neverland needs two guitarists on hand instead of just one.

If he does well enough tonight, just maybe…

Of course, that will never happen if he spends the whole gig distracted by tight skirts and Regina's lovely pout, so he shifts a little, angles his body a bit more away from her, and pays more attention to his hands than his heart.

**.::.**

She ordered too much.

Regina's I'll-be-hungrier-once-I-have-a-chance-to-relax plan turns out more along the lines of once-everyone-else-is-distracted-by-the-gig-I'll-be-free-to-brood-and-fret-and-overthink-everything-without-worrying-about-being-caught, and as a result she's halfway through the set and sitting in front of a dissected chicken burger and half a portion of fries.

Henry is helping with the fries, at least, stealing them off her plate now that he's finished all of his own. But the burger, that's all on her. She'd taken a couple of bites earlier, and then tipped the bun off. The fries are carby enough; she doesn't have the appetite for bun _and_ fries. But she needs the protein from the chicken, she knows that, so she's been cutting off bites of it and dipping it into her barbeque sauce ever since.

She hears Dr. Hopper in her head again, _Have any of your other eating habits changed?_ and wonders if she should be checking today off in the Bad Day column. She'd had soup for lunch – a cup of ten-vegetable from Grumpy's as she'd gone over some paperwork. It's not really a full meal (maybe if it was something heartier – their wild rice and chicken soup, or the beef stew – but not the ten-vegetable). But she'd treated herself to one of their white chocolate raspberry scones, too, and brought it back to her office to have with her afternoon coffee – which she'd doctored with an indulgent pour of half and half.

Does the fat in half and half compensate for the lack of protein at lunch?

A drink appears in front of her – another bourbon to replace the one she'd finished earlier – and Regina frowns at it as Ruby drops herself into the empty seat at their table and asks, "Do you mind if I sit for a few? I'm on break, but I want to watch."

Regina shakes her head, and then taps the rim of the bourbon. "I didn't order this."

Ruby shrugs, tells her, "You looked like you could use another; it's on the house," and then turns her attention to the stage, where Robin has begun to pick out a series of notes that sound vaguely familiar.

She probably shouldn't have another drink – she still has half her cider left. Then again, she still has half her cider left, she reasons, so she lifts the glass to her lips and takes the first sip. She'll leave the rest of the cider, order a water when Ruby finishes her break, and it's a short drive home. She'd sipped the first bourbon on an empty stomach, so her joints are all a bit warm and loose. She's not drunk, not even close, not even _tipsy_ , but she can feel the effects of the liquor.

She should probably eat more of those fries.

Henry reaches to steal another and she taps at the back of his hand, leans over and tells him, "That's enough, young man."

He smirks mischievously at her and leans back in his chair to watch the show. Problem solved.

She reaches for another fry herself, dipping it in sauce just as Tink starts to sing, and Regina realizes why the song sounded familiar. It's a cover, a song she hears in the mornings when she bothers to listen to the radio instead of her own music.

_I've got a girl crush  
_ _Hate to admit it but  
_ _I've got a hard rush  
_ _Ain't slowing down  
_ _I've got it real bad..._

Ruby smirks and snorts a little laugh next to her, then turns to Regina and shakes her head.

"I bet she thought this was really funny," Ruby murmurs to her; it takes Regina a moment to get the joke, but when Tink gets to the chorus, it clicks.

 _I want to taste her lips  
_ _Yeah 'cause they taste like you  
_ _I want to drown myself  
_ _In a bottle of her perfume  
_ _I want her long blonde hair  
_ _I want her magic touch  
_ _Yeah 'cause maybe then  
_ _You'd want me just as much_  
I've got a girl crush

It's supposed to be ironic. A song about a "girl crush" that's all about a man. Unless of course the person singing it is a lesbian, and then it's an actual crush on a girl who is presumably with _another_ girl. Suddenly gone from ironic to very, very literal. Regina cracks a smile and glances at Ruby, who's still grinning next to her, and gives her a little nod of acknowledgement.

When she looks back up, Tink has zeroed in on their table, and Regina watches as Ruby looks casually back and then stills, caught in the blonde musician's gaze.

_The way that she's whispering  
_ _The way that she's pulling you in  
_ _Lord knows I've tried  
_ _I can't get her off my mind_

Tink's gaze slides away, flits over the crowd, but Regina keeps watching Ruby, the way she smiles a little and fiddles slightly with a ring on one of her fingers. She takes a deep breath, shakes her head, then catches Regina staring and gives a dramatic roll of her eyes as if to say _Can you believe that?_

She's still smiling, though, so Regina thinks that Ruby's probably not as put out as she'd like her to imagine.

Regina shakes her head a little, and turns her attention back to her chicken, cutting herself another bite.

The song ends a minute later, and Regina watches as Robin and Tink exchange a silent glance. She thinks Robin shakes his head a little, but it's such a small movement, she can't be sure of it.

Tink says only, "We're going to sing something new for you," and then nods at Robin to begin.

His shoulders lift on a deep breath, then blow out as he starts to pluck out the beginning of the next song. It's slow and a little moody. Pretty. Even more so when Tink starts to sing it.

_I could break down and cry  
_ _Laugh it off and deny  
_ _Draw lines in the sand  
_ _And count on both hands  
_ _All the reasons why  
_ _This just won't work  
_ _It'll be nothing but hurt_

_That sounds familiar_ , Regina thinks dourly, reaching for her bourbon for a steeling sip as the lyrics hit a bit close to home.

_I can swear that I don't  
_ _And maybe one day I won't  
_ _But for how hard I've tried  
_ _I can't unlove you  
_ _And a heart can't unbreak  
_ _I can't unfeel how it felt  
_ _To feel so much myself  
_ _My whole body ached  
_ _And I can't unknow this  
_ _Lord, I wish I knew how  
_ _But I can't unlove you  
_ _So come love me for now_

At the break between verses Regina becomes acutely aware of three things: there are tears prickling at the edges of her lashes, Ruby is watching _her_ now (intently), and Robin has not looked up from his guitar since he started playing.

Tink's gaze settles back on their table again, but this time it hits on Regina, locks there, and then slides pointedly to her right. To Robin. And then back.

Regina's mouth drops open, heat flaring up under her skin that has nothing to do with the bourbon she's now gripping loosely in her fingertips. _We're going to sing something new for you._ Did he… Did he write this?

_If I were twenty five  
_ _I know just what I'd do  
_ _I would have already kissed  
_ _Til I was drunk on your lips  
_ _A thousand times too few  
_ _But we have other lives  
_ _And we know it ain't right  
_ _And this is going nowhere  
_ _If I'm with you I don't care  
_ _Take me nowhere tonight_

Regina has only one thought: _Do not cry in front of your son._

Her heart is pounding, hard, and she's fairly certain she's sweating, is _absolutely_ certain her cheeks are hot. And her vision is blurry and wet.

Robin _definitely_ wrote this.

And she _cannot_ let Henry figure that out.

She shifts a little in her seat, tries to make it look casual as she settles her elbow on the table and rests her chin against her fingers, knuckles pressed to her lip as she blinks and a tear slips out.

_They call it fire  
_ _But it feels just like drowning  
_ _With the weight of my burning desire  
_ _Closing in all around me_

Tink sings, _I wasn't lost until you found me_ , and Regina squeezes her eyes shut against a lump in her throat, feels the drip of a tear down her other cheek. Shit. _Shit_.

Please say he's not looking. Please let Henry _not_ be looking _._

_And I can't unlove you  
_ _And a heart can't unbreak  
_ _I can't unfeel how it felt  
_ _To feel so much myself  
_ _My whole body ached  
_ _I can't unknow this  
_ _Lord, I wish I knew how  
_ _But I can't unlove you  
_ _So come love me for now_

She opens her eyes again, and catches him watching her. Robin. Grimacing and guilty, and if she needed any more proof that he _wrote that_ , there it is.

He mouths, "I'm sorry," as Tink sings a final _I can't unlove you, so come love me for now_ , but Regina shakes her head and smiles at him, wiping subtly at the two damp tracks down her cheeks.

"It's really good," she mouths back. A little _too_ good, but she can't begrudge him his outlets, and as much as she may _feel_ like the whole room is staring right at her as she dissolves into a puddle, a quick sweep reassures her that everyone is too enraptured by Tink's performance to notice the woman taking a shuddering breath at the table in the front corner.

It's not until Ruby pats her hand and tells her, "Enjoy your bourbon," before pushing to her feet that she realizes Ruby _knew_. She must have before she decided to weave all the way across her room to take her break, and Regina is grateful and embarrassed in turns.

She snags Ruby's wrist, and requests, "Water," gets a nod in confirmation and lets her go.

And then she takes a deep swig of her bourbon, because, well, why not? She deserves it after having to sit through that. She feels scraped open, a bit raw, and her heart hurts. The tears were thankfully brief and wrestled under control, but she can feel them just under the surface.

She takes another bourbon-soaked breath, another sip, as Tink lets out a little, "Oof," and then, "Why don't we lighten things up a little?"

God, yes, please.

She takes a minute to introduce Robin, calls him a true hero of the people for lending his time and talents while she's out of commission, calls him a very talented songwriter, and Regina's heart shoots up into her throat.

It's safe to assume from his utter lack of reaction to it or her that Henry hadn't realized exactly what he's just heard (a brief glance at John proves exactly the opposite, and Regina feels herself flush again and thanks God that it's dark-ish in here), but if Tink points out that Robin wrote that song, Henry will put two and two together. A blind chimp would put two and two together.

Thankfully, she doesn't. Just says that she couldn't let him join her onstage without roping him into singing something with her, and that they'd decided, "You can't go wrong with a little Stevie Nicks."

Regina prays this one won't hurt, and breathes a little sigh of relief as Robin plays the opening chords of "Leather and Lace." She has a minute to stitch herself back up.

**.::.**

He'd hoped she wouldn't notice.

Okay, no, he'd hoped she _would_ notice, but he'd hoped she would notice and enjoy it. Had hoped at least that it wouldn't make things worse.

They'd written the song on Henry's birthday, he and Tink, and while she was willing to give him a pass on "Something," there was absolutely no deterring Nelly Tinkerman from singing "Unlove You" tonight. No matter how vehemently he'd tried to convince her that this was, perhaps, not the time for such a thing.

He'd just promised her they were just friends, that he would just be her friend, would be the good guy. It wasn't the _time_ to ply her with love songs, and certainly not ones that were for her. About her.

So he'd hoped she wouldn't notice, or at the very least that she wouldn't mind. Had found himself utterly unable to so much as look in her direction until the song was almost done, lest he be met with ire and disbelief.

The tears were worse.

He hadn't meant for her to cry. Never means for her to cry, and yet somehow manages it anyway.

It had gutted him to know he'd hurt her, and publicly so, and the apology could not have fallen fast enough from his lips. But then she'd just smiled at him, mouthed something that he's fairly sure was _Really good,_ and that tense twist of guilt had unwound just a little.

She'd noticed, but she didn't seem to hate him for it.

He'd watched her glance nervously at Henry as the song finished, but John had thankfully had the boy distracted by something on his phone while Tink had been singing. Good man. Robin might have to take Neal up on his offer to hook him up with the particularly good weed, and give John a little thank-you gift for helping them dodge that particular nosy bullet.

Now that it's over, he feels a shaky sort of post-adrenaline looseness, and has to force himself to focus through the first verse of "Leather and Lace," until he feels settled in his bones again.

By the time he joins Tink on the chorus, his fingers have stopped shaking, and Regina is back to whispering to Henry and nibbling at her fries rather than gulping down her whiskey. He's able to loosen up a bit and have fun – they've had a hard time getting through this one without grins and giggles, something about Nicks and Henley just _working_ for them. He feels the pitch of nerves as he starts his first solo verse, but it settles quickly.

_You in the moonlight  
_ _With your sleepy eyes  
_ _Could you ever love a man like me_

It had been a compromise song, chosen because she'd managed to draw a sappy admission out of him that it reminded him of Regina. If he wouldn't sing any of the things he'd _written_ for her, at least he could serenade her slyly through a duet, she'd reasoned. Ever the matchmaker, she was. If only she knew.

He glances at Regina now, finds her smiling as she watches them, and can't help but sing the next lines to her, grinning playfully.

_You were right  
_ _When I walked into your house  
_ _I knew I'd never want to leave_

She laughs a little at him, he can see it from here, and he knows he should probably be singing to Tink, but he never can resist Regina's elusive smiles.

_Sometimes I'm a strong man  
_ _Sometimes cold and scared  
_ _And sometimes I cry_

She bites at her bottom lip and gives him an admonishing look (or tries to, but that bitten lip is still curved into a smile), then points forcefully a Tink.

Right.

But when he glances at Tink, she holds her hands up innocently and shakes her head, stepping back a little so she's not even slightly between him and Regina, snickering all the while. A sort of non-verbal, _By all means…_

So screw it, why not? She's laughing now, isn't she? So he looks back at Regina, and hams it up a little.

_When I saw you  
_ _I knew with you to light my nights  
_ _Somehow I would get by_

The painfully intimate song he'd written for her had somehow miraculously managed not to mortify her entirely, but the serenading does. It's a bit more obvious, of course, and as soon as she remembers that there are other people in this room starting to glance her way as Robin croons to her, Regina turns further into her table, dropping her head into her hand as her shoulders shake with laughter.

He takes pity on her then – figures he'll catch hell for it later if he doesn't – and sings the last two lines of his verse to Tink.

_First time I saw you  
_ _I knew with you to light my nights  
_ _Somehow I would get by_

They chuckle their way into another chorus, and he makes a concerted effort to keep his eyes on Tink for the rest of the song, and not on the gleam of Regina's crossed legs in the glow from the stage lights.

**.::.**

Well, at least she doesn't feel like crying anymore.

She feels like a tomato, cheeks burning with embarrassment, and aching from a smile she can't push down, and then to make matters worse, Henry leans over and says excitedly, "Mom, he sang that to you!"

Her chuckling "Shh!" is automatic, a knee-jerk side-effect of her mortification, but Henry just grins and says that he thinks Robin still likes her a lot.

Understatement.

She busies herself by gulping at the water Ruby has graciously ferried to her, watching Robin sing with Tink. Now that she's not distracted by her day, and not quite as mired in alcohol and misery as she was the last time he sang here, she can truly appreciate how sexy he is on stage.

There's something in the way he carries himself, an ease and a comfort that she's enjoyed watching tonight. And now he's having fun – really, truly having fun. Grinning, and oh, he has a nice smile. And nice arms in that shirt, and nice… everything.

She really shouldn't be _appreciating_ him so much. It'll only lead to more bad choices.

But the alternative is to think about other things, and quite frankly all the other things she could dwell on right now are depressing.

Or anxiety-inducing.

In the interest of finishing the rest of the chicken on her plate, she tries to clear her mind of everything but the shift of muscle in his arm as he strums, the light sheen of sweat at his temple, the smooth sound of his voice.

Tries to let herself see him outside of _them._

It works, for a while.

**.::.**

Robin leaves the stage exhilarated and proud – and a little anxious.

It had been a good set, all had gone well, but he knows at the very least Henry will want to talk to him, and he's still half-expecting a good scolding from Regina.

He'd glanced at her another time or two (or ten – he's a weak man) throughout the last few songs, and she'd grown progressively more broody.

Whatever had been bothering her earlier seems to have stuck (or she'd finally realized she was pissed at him for that song), and his fingers itch to trail through her hair and run between her shoulders until she leans into him and lets him take some of her troubles.

But they're not supposed to do that anyway, are they? So he busies his hands with throwing back one of the whiskey shots August had left on the edge of the bar for the band, and watches as Tink and Wendy start to mingle, and Killian hails August for another shot.

"You were so good!" comes a very excited voice from behind him, and Robin turns to grin down at Henry.

"You liked it?" he asks unnecessarily, and Henry insists that _Yes,_ and his Mom did, too. His Mom who, Robin notices, is nowhere to be found.

He searches the crowd of bodies behind Henry as he asks him which songs he liked best, and finally catches sight of Regina making her way over, John towering behind her. She looks a little exasperated, and he finds out why when she's finally within earshot and interrupts Henry's listing of his five favorite songs with a scolding, "I told him not to bother you if you were busy."

"I wasn't," he assures her with a smile, half-turning when Killian nudges his arm and offers him a second shot. Apparently it was another round he'd ordered, not just another shot. Robin takes the glass, but doesn't drink it yet. Is it polite to shoot whiskey in front of an eleven-year-old? Probably not.

"It was a good show," she says with a soft curve of lips that makes his heart go roughly the consistency of warm wax. God, this "just friends" thing is going to become slow torture, isn't it?

It's been less than a week and he's starving for her, distracted by the shade of her lipstick, by the curve of her bare neck, and the dip of her collar exposed by her top, and the way the strap of her purse has tugged it slightly to the side. He can see it better now, tries to be subtle in the way he rakes his gaze down her body as he thanks her for the compliment. The skirt is blue. Dark blue with a pair of black stripes that run down the front and then off to the sides, and tightly belted in a way that makes the whole thing… irresistible.

He shoots that whiskey after all.

And then he does something he probably should not, and says, "Hey, Henry, I'm gonna talk to your mum for a minute. Grown-up stuff." Henry's face falls a little, until Robin reaches for the man next to him and says, "Maybe Killian can show you his drum set til we get back."

He perks back up at that, says, "Cool!" and Regina's eyes go wide.

"Oh, no," she protests, but Killian just shrugs and says _Fine by me, mate._ She gives Robin a look, then tells Henry, "Just so we are absolutely clear, there will be no drums in my house, young man."

Robin smirks and reaches for her hand as Killian argues that drums are a fine choice for a young lad, assuring her, "They're just going to go _look_ at them, babe. Come with me."

He leads her in one direction while Killian and Henry head off in the other, and Regina calls back over her shoulder, "No drums; I mean it!" And then she mutters, "I'm going to kill you," and Robin laughs.

"Don't worry, I'll convince him that guitars will get him more girls," Robin assures as he leads her back toward August's office. Being alone with her when she looks as good as she does tonight is probably not one of his better ideas, but he wants to know what's got her so glum that an hour of music and a few drinks couldn't loosen her up.

In the interest of his commitment to staying in the friend zone, he does not urge her ahead of him, keeping their fingers gently linked and letting her trail behind as they head out of the din. After a pair of beers and two shots of whiskey, he's not sure if he could keep his hands to himself if he got a proper glimpse of the rear view of this particular skirt.

He's just shut August's office door behind them when Regina asks quietly, "What's up?"

"I was going to ask you the same thing," Robin tells her, turning around and stuffing his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching for her. "I spent a bit more time than I probably should have sneaking glances at you while I was playing, and you're not yourself tonight. Something's bothering you. I know you said it was just a long day, but I also know that when you leave here no one will ask. So I wanted to make sure I did."

She blows out a breath, her shoulders sinking lightly before her arms lift and cross snugly over her chest. But she attempts a smile (doesn't really succeed, but she tries), and tells him, "Work was… upsetting."

"Sidney," he assumes, the name grinding out of him with all the ill will he can muster. It's really just about time for him to give that tosser a proper warning to back the fuck off.

Regina's brows lift in confirmation before she adds, "And Leo – my boss. Sidney left me another gift today, after I very specifically told him not to on Monday. I thought maybe Leo could say something to him, since he's clearly not listening to me." Her lips purse, annoyance shimmering off of her like an aura. "He told me to deal with it myself," she continues, and Robin feels a protective sort of anger start to burn hot in his chest. "That it isn't his job to—"

"Protect his employees from sexual harassment in the workplace?" Robin finishes for her, because that is bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. If it's not that wanker's job to protect her then whose job is it?

"Clean up my mess," she finishes, and that's not any bloody better, now, is it? Robin's jaw clenches, and he mutters a quiet _Wanker_ that draws a hint of a smile from her. "He said I knew what I was getting into when I chose to, in his words, 'dip my pen in the company ink,' and I should have thought it through before agreeing to go out with Sidney. And... he's not wrong about that."

"Yes, he is," Robin defends, but Regina shakes her head.

"No," she says, "he's not. I knew how he felt about me, and I knew how I felt about him. And I was warned, by people who were clearly more level-headed than me at the time, that it would end badly. I did it anyway."

"That doesn't mean that blighter should be able to do whatever he wants now that you've called things off," Robin insists.

"No," she agrees, her shoulders shifting in a restless imitation of a shrug. "But it apparently means that I am responsible for dealing with it. Which means I have to have yet another uncomfortable conversation with Sidney – an even-more-uncomfortable-than-usual conversation, so that he gets the picture this time." Irritation flickers in those dark eyes as she adds, "And I have to do it without in any way risking Leo's business – that was made very clear."

"God forbid your request for a comfortable workplace affect his bottom line," Robin mutters darkly, his fingers clenching into useless fists in his pockets. "Let me talk to Sidney. You can keep your nose clean, and I'll make sure he gets the picture."

Her brows shoot up, and she lets out a doubtful scoff, telling him, "That's a terrible idea."

"Why?"

"Well, first of all, because I'm pretty sure if you tried to talk to him right now, you'd end up punching him." Regina tells him, her gaze sliding pointedly down the tensely coiled muscles of his arms. Robin pulls his hands out of his pockets and makes a point to relax. He's admittedly a bit… wound… in his irritation.

"Second…" Regina tilts her head a little and asks, "What would _you_ do if Sidney came to you and told you to back off?"

"I'd tell him to fuck off, and that he's a delusional wanker who can't tell when a woman isn't interested, and he needs to sack up and move on," Robin tells her, and Regina nods, smugly – like he's walked right into the answer she thought he'd give. "And I'd be right."

"Yes," she concedes, "But _he_ clearly doesn't see it that way. He's still trying, so he must think he has a chance."

"Well, then I'd tell him he doesn't know you very well."

"Mm," she hums. "He's known me for five years, you've known me for six months."

Robin scowls. "I don't care; I know you better."

"If you said _that_ to him, he'd probably ask you fifteen questions you don't have the answers to," she tells him, taking a step back so she can lean against the edge of August's desk, letting her purse rest on top of the shift schedule near her hip.

Robin scoffs, and challenges, "Try me." Like she said – he's known her six months, he's paid attention. And he's spent plenty of time in her home, and with her son. He likes to think he knows her pretty damn well by now.

But she smirks a little, and asks, "What kind of lotion do I keep in my purse?"

Robin frowns. He wasn't expecting to strike out on question number one.

"You think he knows—"

"I know he does," she says. "It's L'Occitane. He had me in the Secret Santa at work last year – in fact, he's had me three of the last five years – and last Christmas, I got a L'Occitane gift basket and a note that he'd noticed I liked the lotion and thought I might want to try something else."

"That's cheating – he _gave_ it to you. And three of the last five years?" Robin questions suspiciously. Nobody's that lucky.

"Yeah," Regina sighs, adding, "Funny, huh?" in a way that makes it clear she thinks it's anything but.

"Not the word I'd use," he agrees, before he says, "Try me again."

She squints a little, then asks, "Where's my favorite place to go for lunch during the week?"

Fuck.

His scowl deepens, and Regina continues her questioning, making him feel worse with every question he comes up empty for: "What time do I take my morning coffee break? What's my favorite flower? What's my favorite candy?"

"Trick question," he tells her to that one. "Candy makes you feel guilty."

One brow lifts and falls, but she tells him, "I have a weakness for mini Reese's cups. I don't like to overindulge, but when I want a treat…"

Well. Alright then. Apparently he doesn't bloody know her at all.

She sucks in a breath, lets it out, and says, "He gets the flowers wrong, by the way. But he thinks he knows. He knows my go-to lunch orders, he knows my shirt size—"

"He knows your shirt size?" Robin questions, because that's a bit stalkerish even for Sidney.

"Secret Santa," she reminds. "Cream colored cashmere sweater. Designer. I told him to stick to less than a hundred dollars if he ever had me again – the L'Occitane gift set was a hundred and fifty. I looked it up. He's never been good at following requests to not go so far out of his way for me – which I should have known. I _do_ know. Because I've known him for half a decade, too. So I know that if you confronted him, he wouldn't believe you. He'd get defensive. He doesn't like you, and if you lost your temper and _did_ punch him, well, that's just an assault charge waiting to happen. And I'm trying to keep you _out_ of jail."

"Might be worth it," Robin mutters, and her expression shifts so quickly it almost startles him.

She goes from knowing and a bit smug to angry, and agitated, telling him, "Don't. Don't even joke about— You're not throwing away your freedom because some jerk won't leave me alone. I won't let you ruin your life for me, Robin. If I was going to do that, I'd be dating you."

Right. Of course. It's the whole reason they're not together, yeah? Keeping him with Roland, keeping him out of jail.

"Alright," he placates. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it, I just…" He reaches for her then, finally giving in to temptation and taking a few steps to close the space between them. He runs his thumb down the edge of her bicep as he tells her, "I hate seeing you bothered by all this."

"And I hate being bothered by it, but it's mine to fix," she reasons. "Or at the very least, it's not yours." She gives him a tight little smile and says, "We're not together, you don't need to protect me."

Bullshit, he thinks. Maybe they're not together, and maybe she doesn't _need_ protecting, but he's not going to stand idly by while she's being harassed. That's not the kind of man he is.

And to ensure that she knows it, he asks, "We're friends, aren't we?"

"Yes."

"We met because I went a little too far to help a friend," he reminds her. "Don't ever think you're not worth protecting to me just because I'm not your boyfriend. You matter to me; I don't like seeing you upset."

Her shoulders lift and fall, and she tells him, "I just… don't want you involved in this. I don't want you hurt."

"I'm pretty confident I could take him."

She gives him a look, and a flat muttering of his name.

He sighs, rubs up and down her biceps again and asks, "Don't I get a say in whether I'm willing to risk the hurt?"

"No," she tells him firmly. "Not this time. It's my issue, and I'm asking you not to help – or at least, not to help in that way."

"Well then in what way can I help?" he asks, because doing nothing makes him feel useless.

Her smile curves again at that, and she tells him softly, "You noticed and you asked. That helps." And then she glances somewhere in the region of his chest, and mutters, "And I know it's pathetic, but I could really use a hug."

"It's not pathetic," he dismisses, stepping even closer and drawing her in as he urges, "Come here."

Robin wraps his arms around her, finally, breathes in the scent of faded perfume and lavender shampoo, and enjoys the way she presses her nose into the crook of his shoulder and sighs. Her body loosens, that tension she's been holding starts to ebb away, and Robin finds himself rocking them gently.

If this is all she'll let him do for her, he'll do it as long as she'll allow.

**.::.**

That tempting evergreen smell of him has faded some since he was invading her space earlier, mixing now with sweat and skin and the sweet remnants of whiskey. It's no less comforting, especially with those strong arms curled around her. It feels… safe. Quiet. Like a pause in the chaos of her life, her own little eye in the storm.

Regina lets herself sink into it, tells herself to stop thinking for one minute and just let herself have this. Just a minute to be cradled against someone solid and steady; to not have to be her own pillar of strength.

The tears that well up after a moment are a mortifying surprise, and she sucks in a shuddering breath as she tries to force them down. She's just so _frustrated_ , and the conversation with Leo had left her feeling so _stupid_ , and now she's here, in his arms, and it's like giving up that little bit of strength has suddenly left her entirely weak and vulnerable.

Shit. Damnit, damnit, shit. She needs to pull herself together, not water the soft cotton of his shirt with stupid, useless tears.

And of course, Robin doesn't miss a beat, using the hand that had been scratching soothingly at the nape of her neck to tangle in her hair and ease her head back until he can see the source of her shame. He shakes his head a little as she sniffles pitifully, frowning deeply at her and then pressing gentle kisses to her damp cheekbones.

Her heart aches with the sweet comfort of it, and it's not until he presses those lips just between her brows and murmurs, "Sorry; I'm sorry, I shouldn't have…" that she remembers they're not supposed to be doing that.

Kissing. Of any kind.

They're too close; it's not good for them to be this close when she's upset.

So she rasps, "It's okay," and runs her hands down his biceps, his forearms, her thumb skimming over the tattoo there as she draws his arms away from her.

"I said I wouldn't—" He shakes his head a little, and she feels bad that _he_ clearly feels bad. She knows what they'd said, but it had just been a couple of pecks. Easily done, and easily stopped. He's ghosting his thumb across the apple of her cheek now, saying, "I hate when you cry. I didn't mean to make you cry earlier; I'm sorry about that, too."

"Don't be," she insists, as he thumbs the last of the wetness off her other cheek as well. "It was a really good song. It hurt, but it was a… good hurt? I don't know how you managed to put that kind of feeling into words. But you did, and it was…" Gut-wrenching. Incredibly touching. Too public and incredibly intimate at the same time. She shakes her head, and insists, "Don't apologize for it."

His mouth has worked its way into a smile she'd almost call shy if she didn't know him better, and he asks her softly, "You really liked it?"

"I really did," and because she remembers what John had said earlier—about Robin wanting her to see what he's become—she tells him, "I'm proud of you. You looked so happy up there – it looked right. You had a great night tonight, and I'm sorry I wasn't in a better mood. I'm sorry you were worried about me instead of enjoying this for yourself."

"I enjoyed it," he assures, still giving her that bashful smile. "It _felt_ good. But I know when something's not right with you, and I don't have it in me to let you suffer silently. Not kissing you is one thing, not caring is…" He breathes in, then out, and tells her, "Not an option."

She mirrors him – inhales deeply, exhaling a heavy breath and wishing all her stress could go with it.

"This afternoon was a disaster," she confesses. "I've known Leo since I was a teenager; I thought he'd help. And I just ended up humiliated. He made me feel… stupid."

"You're not stupid," Robin tells her, with just as much conviction as she'd imagined he would when she made the confession. "You're one of the least stupid people I know. And one of the most capable, the strongest. You're intelligent, and classy, and caring. I don't know what else he said to you, but he's a wanker. Don't listen to any of it—please."

He smiles, uses the hand back in her hair to give her head a little wiggle as he says, "Listen to me, alright?"

When he draws her back in for another lingering hug, she goes willingly (she's not crying anymore, so the likelihood they'll devolve into inappropriate kissing is… hopefully less). Regina tells herself that hugs are perfectly acceptable friend behavior, and folds herself around him again.

"You did something you regret, that's all," he murmurs into her hair. "Everyone does that. It's not your fault he's not letting go. _Please_ let me help you."

But she can't, she can't do that, there's nothing he _can_ do. Because, "Robin, he will not listen to you."

His chest sags beneath her cheek with a heavy sigh, and he scratches at her nape again the way she likes and concedes, "Will you at least tell me if he gets worse?"

That seems like a fair compromise, so she gives in and says, "I can do that."

"I don't want to send you home sad," he confesses to her as a particularly shivery whorl of his fingertips in her hair sends her lashes fluttering. "You're sure there's nothing else I can do to cheer you up?"

She says it before she can stop herself, smiling wryly and muttering, "Not unless you want to make out a little. That usually does it."

He takes it as the joke it's meant as, snorting a little and squeezing gently at the back of her neck. "Don't taunt a man that way," he grouses good-naturedly before parroting, "' _Not unless you want to make out a little_.' Have you seen yourself, love?"

**.::.**

She lifts her head off his chest, pouting slightly as she says, "Yes?" as if she has no idea how tempting she truly is.

"And you still have to ask?" he questions, half distracted by the more chocolatey flecks of brown in her eyes. He can really only ever see them when he's this close. He likes her this close, all fragrant and cuddly and pliant. Open. Maybe they're just friends, but he knows for certain there's nobody else in her life that gets to bury their fingers in the warm hair just above her neck, or chase shivers down her spine.

She drops her gaze, the shadowed lids of her eyes half covering that brown he was so admiring. And then she wraps a fist around his heart and grips tight with the quiet confession, "I don't see me the way you do."

There's a rapidly lengthening list of people in her life that Robin would absolutely like to wallop, but Cora fucking Mills is pretty near to the top for moments just like this one. How this woman can think she's anything in the vicinity of plain, he has no idea, but there's a part of her ego that seems irreparably bruised, and it galls him. And maybe she won't let him do anything to remedy the Sidney problem, but he'll be damned if he'll not step in and fight her moments of low self-esteem.

Robin scratches at the back of her neck again, because he's cottoned on to the way she sighs softly whenever he does, and then he says, "Well, then allow me to enlighten you. You're bloody gorgeous tonight. I wasn't looking at you just because you were sad; I couldn't stop. Every time you crossed your legs, the light caught on you, and it was all black pumps and bare shins. I like your hair this way, with a little more curl to it, and this skirt is the thing wet dreams are made of."

She rolls her eyes at that, but she's battling a smile now, trying valiantly (but with little success) to keep the corners of her mouth from curving up into something flattered and flirtatious. It's definitely progress, so he keeps going.

"I have very ungentlemanly thoughts whenever I see you fresh from work in these tight skirts. Especially when there are desks involved," he grins, the hand resting at her hip giving it a little pressing squeeze. Those straight white teeth dig into her bottom lip, another sad attempt to keep from grinning at him, and oh, how he enjoys getting to flirt boldly with her and not feel badly about it. "So let me make it very clear, Regina – there's no 'if's or 'unless' to my wanting to kiss you. I always want to kiss you."

One of her hands lifts to tuck her hair back behind her ear, her chin tilting slightly as if she wants to duck her head but can't quite bring herself to.

"Keep talking like that, and I might lose all sense and let you," she says to him, and Robin feels a little punch of adrenaline at the opportunity. And then she dashes it with, "But I should get back to Henry."

She offers up a half-hearted pout of disappointment, and he wants her smiling again, wants it to reach her eyes. So he needles her a little, assuring, "I can get a lot done in a thirty-second snog. A friendly one, you know."

She laughs at that, a full-throated thing that has her nose crinkling and his heart soaring.

"You're ridiculous," she insists; Robin just shrugs.

"Got you smiling," he points out.

She concedes the point with a little lift of her brows, telling him, "You did," and, "Thank you."

He murmurs a quiet, "You're welcome," and then it seems they've run out of things to talk about. They should be disentangling and stepping away from each other, should be heading back out into the bar to find Henry and relieve Killian.

But they're not.

He stays just as he is, pressed right up to her front, one hand planted at the curve of her hip, the other still teasing lightly in her hair. Regina has looped her arms around his waist, her fingers linked at the base of his spine, one thumb rubbing idly against his back as she focuses her gaze somewhere around his collar.

Seconds stretch, and neither seems to want to make the first move to separate. Robin watches her face, catches the moment her brow knits slightly and the way her tongue peeks out to wet her lips.

And then she startles him by looking up into his eyes again, sucking in a breath and hesitating half a moment before she asks (a little breathlessly, to be honest), "Thirty second snog, huh?"

Robin grins, and nods, adding, "A friendly one. As friends." Her gaze drops to his lips as she swallows thickly, and Robin's pulse starts to skip and hop. Should he be discouraging this? He probably should be… But instead he's sweetening the deal, adding, "Because you've had a long day, and you deserve it."

It coaxes another smile out of her, and she looks up at him again, brown eyes locking on blue. He can see the absurd amusement in her eyes, imagines she's no doubt seeing the same in his, and the air snaps with tension. And then she whispers, "Start the clock."

Robin groans and dives in deep, using the hand in her hair to pull her mouth to his and reveling in the way one of her hands swoops up his back to press him even closer. If he only has thirty seconds, he intends to make the most of it, so he lets that hand at her hip slip down, groping at her ass and drinking down the moan that hums in her throat.

He hoists her a little until she's actually sitting on the desk instead of just leaning against it, and drops both hands to her thighs, shoving that skirt up until she can part her legs enough for him to step between them. And then he careens away from her mouth, tears off down her neck in wet, sucking kisses that have her letting out a rough "Oh!" that _does things_ to him.

He squeezes at her thighs, slides his hands to her ass again and squeezes there too, licks his way back up the column of her throat, nipping at her jaw, covering her gasping mouth again and sinking his tongue in against hers.

One hand stays on her ass, grips it shamelessly while his other hand finds its way back into her hair as she kisses him back with enthusiasm. She rips a shiver from him as her nails drag down his back, her hands delving into his back pockets and giving him a run for his money in the ass-groping department.

Robin groans into her mouth and nips at her bottom lip, then dives back in for more.

**.::.**

She's lost count.

A thirty-second snog, it was going to be a thirty-second snog and she was going to hold it to that, but then he did that thing with his tongue against her neck, and now the only thing she's going to be holding against anyone is _Robin_ against _her._

It's a spectacularly bad idea, but it had been pretty clear that this was just… this. Just a little—

Oh, god, he's giving her head a little tug back with that not-quite-gentle grip he has on her hair and kissing her neck again, and Regina squeezes his ass once more, because it's a really nice ass, and for the next thirty-some seconds, she _can_.

It's a bad idea, but hardly the worst one she's had today, and she was right, it _is_ making her feel better. Or at least, it's making her feel _good_ , she can feel her nipples tightening, can feel her skin heating.

They should stop this soon. In another minute, maybe. It can be a ninety-second snog between friends, that's reasonable. (That's insane; she's going to be mortified when she's no longer feeling the light buzz of two bourbons.) But if they're going to do that, then she wants…

"Kiss me," she gasps against his ear, and he makes this rough little sound, mutters _I am_ —but returns to her mouth just the same, so she can indulge in those heady kisses. He tastes like whiskey and bad decisions and sweet compliments, and she can't get enough. She pulls him even closer, and tastes and tastes and tastes.

And then there's a rush of noise, the clatter of the bar, and a startled, "Oh! Sorry…"

Robin's mouth breaks from hers with a wet smack, and he turns his head toward the sound, a punch of embarrassment warring with the adrenaline and arousal in her veins when they realize that August is standing in the open doorway of the office.

Smirking at them.

Regina flounders uselessly, frozen with her skirt rucked halfway up her thighs, one ankle hooked around the back of _Robin's_ thigh, her hands (oh, God) deep in his pockets, and one of his still on her ass.

Oh, God.

Oh, _God_.

Robin seems similarly stunned by their interruption, panting lightly as he stares at his boss, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallows thickly.

The only one who isn't rooted to the spot is August, who holds up the dollar bill folded in half between his fingers and says, "I didn't mean to interrupt." But he does just that, stepping into the office, and walking right up to them as he says, "I asked Henry where I could find you, and he said you guys were _talking_."

Oh, God, _Henry._ What is she _doing?_

Robin turns his head back toward her, huffing a soft laugh against her neck. Regina's not sure whether she wants to laugh, cry, or sink mortified into the floor.

She feels August tuck that bill gingerly between the backs of her fingers and the denim of Robin's pocket, her eyes widening slightly as he does.

"I'll, uh, I'll keep him busy for a few more minutes," he chuckles, and then he says, "Carry on…" and turns to leave.

Robin and Regina stay almost comically still until the door clicks shut behind him.

And then Robin mutters, "Well, that killed the mood a bit…"

Regina lets out a slightly hysterical chuckle, letting her ankle slide down and away from his leg as she twists her hand in his pocket to fish out the money August had tucked there. She mutters, "Just a bit," as she draws it between them and frowns.

It's a twenty, but it's not until she sees PROPERTY OF AUGUST W BOOTH scrawled messily across the top that she realizes exactly _which_ twenty dollar bill it is. Hers. From the last time she'd listened to Robin sing and then made out with him inappropriately.

How fitting.

Robin laughs softly again, his hand finally leaving her ass and moving to smooth down her skirt, stepping back out of the danger zone as he draws it further down her thighs.

"He's had that taped to the side of the cash register since you left it here," he tells her, and Regina rolls her eyes, grateful for the distraction from that compromising position they've just been caught in.

"That ass," Regina mutters, before twisting so she can reach the tape dispenser on the desk, ripping off a piece and sticking the bill to the middle of August's computer monitor. "This can stay right here…"

Robin chuckles warmly, his fingertips still at her knees, tracing there in a way that tickles pleasantly. Regina's toes curl in her shoes, and she wonders just how much awkward backpedaling she should be doing about jumping him yet _again_.

But then he asks, "Did it help? The thirty second, very friendly snog?"

"It certainly didn't help my libido," she mutters, pressing gently at his chest so he backs up a pace and she can slip from the desk to her feet. "Or solve any of my problems, but it did feel good."

"Mission accomplished, then," he says, simple as that.

But her guts are starting to twist with anxious shame again, August's abrupt interruption serving as an all too real reminder that she has once again ducked out on her son so she could make out with a man she can't even be with.

 _I want you to really think on what is holding you back_ bounces around her skull again and a bitter, chastising inner voice retorts, _Certainly not any sense of decency or self-control_ to the version of Archie Hopper that has set up shop in her head.

She's rapidly losing the buzz provided by both alcohol and hot kisses (and of course she is, because those things are temporary, and the things keeping them apart are permanent – no matter what Dr. Hopper says, they _are_ , she's not just… she's not just making excuses). And she needs to get back to her son, and be a parent, not some flighty schoolgirl who can spend however long she wants making out with attractive men in inappropriate places.

So she bends to grab the purse they'd managed to knock to the floor in their… activities – she needs to refresh her lipstick and make sure she doesn't look like she's been hooking up in the back room before she heads back outside. But Robin had only taken the one step backward, he's still very, very close, so the action grazes her shoulder against where he's hard in his jeans. She doesn't miss his little inhale at the contact, but she does make a very concerted effort to not let her gaze stray to his erection as she straightens back up.

In fact, she keeps her gaze on her purse, slips it over her shoulder again and unzips it, digging inside for her lipstick and compact.

Next to her, Robin exhales heavily and mutters, "I'm sorry. I should have stopped it."

Regina pauses, and shakes her head, looking up at him and insisting, "No, I shouldn't have started it. I shouldn't have tempted you, and I did."

"Regina, the day I'm not tempted by you is the day I go blind. And deaf." He reaches out for her again, loops a finger around her wrist and smiles at her in way that's far too sweet and boyish for her confused heart to handle. "I watched you throw up, and had to tell myself not to think about how good your legs looked in those little pajama shorts while you were sweating face-first into the toilet bowl," he admits, and she laughs, because it's absurd. "I think you're incredible. You know that."

"I'm addicted to that," she admits with a little wince. "It's why this keeps happening. I don't feel very… confident right now. About anything. And days like today with Sidney and Leo, or when my mother is my mother, it makes me feel…" She doesn't quite have the words for it, for the skin-crawling feeling of anxiety that they set slithering under her skin, but he's pressed his thumb to the front of her wrist and rubs it gently back and forth, and she thinks maybe she doesn't need all the "right" words. He'll get it anyway.

"It makes me feel the furthest thing from incredible. And I know that when I see you, you'll look at me the way you do, and say the things you do, and you'll touch me the way you do, and everything will just… settle." The last thing she wants is to cry again, but she feels the hot prickle of tears at the back of her eyes as she whispers, "You make me feel safe."

His hand shifts, fingers spreading down her palm and weaving with hers, and he opens his mouth to say something, but she needs to get this out, she needs him to _understand_. "But I am not the only one who matters here; you need to be safe, too. And Robin, I am not safe—"

"Don't tell me you're not safe for me again," he sighs, exasperated irritation coloring his tone, but she _isn't_ , and he needs to _know that_.

"I'm not," she insists. "And not in the way that Sidney or my mother aren't safe for me. They are _uncomfortable_ for me, but they are livable. And I don't need hugs and kisses to deal with them; those things just make me feel better. You need to not be in jail. For your son, for you. And it doesn't matter how good it makes me feel, I need to stop doing this – jerking you around, even if you say you don't care. It's hard on both of us, I know it is. I know it's not just me."

He frowns, but he nods a little, tells her, "No, it's not just you."

"I don't want to hurt you," she says, "and I don't want someone else to hurt you because of me. So please, stay away from Sidney, let me handle it. And I will try to find ways to feel safe that don't end in this conversation."

Robin sighs, deeply, but he nods, and lifts their joined hands to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles, and saying, "I don't like this."

Her lips curve on a dry scoff, and she states the obvious: "Neither do I. I much prefer the thirty-second snogging."

He grins at that, chuckling and using their joined hands to draw her into another hug. Looser this time, less fraught, more friendly. They rock a bit with it, and then he murmurs into her hair, "You know I'm always here for you when you feel less than incredible, right? Not just for snogging – we could just sit on the couch very far away from each other and talk."

Her shoulders shake with a snicker before she tells him, "I do know," giving him one last squeeze and then disentangling again. She looks him in the eyes, and smiles, and says, "I never doubt it. And it means the world to me."

"Me, too," he tells her, smiling and shoving his hands safely in his pockets. "I should get back out there," he says. "Do I have lipstick on my face?"

She squints, wipes at a little smudge of soft pink near his lip, and then assures, "You're good. I need to reapply. Why don't you head on out, and I'll be right behind you? I should get Henry home."

"Okay," he nods, his shoulders moving upwards just a little before his hands dig down deeper into his pockets. Not a shrug, really, just an attempt to keep his hands off her again, she thinks. "Have a good night. And stop feeling guilty – it happened, it's done, enjoy it and move on."

"I'll try," she chuckles, but she's not sure she'll succeed. He takes a few steps toward the door, before she stops him again, calling his name and waiting until he turns with a _Hmm?_ And then she tells him, "I really am proud of you. And if it's not too much trouble, I'd really like a recording of that song."

His smile blooms slowly and sly before he tells her, "I think that can be arranged."

Robin turns for the door again and she watches him leave, then fixes her makeup, runs her fingers through her hair, and follows after him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The songs in this chapter are "Girl Crush" by Little Big Town, "Unlove You" by Jennifer Nettles, and "Leather and Lace" originally by Stevie Nicks and Don Henley, but I highly recommend hittin' up the YouTube, and finding a live performance of it by Jennifer Nettles and Ryan Kinder.


	36. Chapter 36

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for anxiety, mentions of disordered eating, and blood. And once again, a big thank you to LillieGrey for her mad skills.

Liam Colter arrives on her doorstep with a pickup loaded with camping gear, an excuse for why he is two hours late, and a clean-shaven smile.

She doesn't like it.

Doesn't like the lateness and doesn't like the lack of scruffy beard on his jaw. It makes him look too much like Daniel – they'd always clearly been brothers, but clean-shaven like this, Liam could be his twin. It makes her heart ache painfully, squeezing even harder when Henry bounds down the steps and Liam greets him with Daniel's easy smile.

She kisses the top of Henry's head and has him promise to call when they arrive safely, and then she sends them off with orders to bring him back _on time,_ at least.

And then she tries to figure out what to do with herself for two whole days alone.

She loses time. Digs in the dirt of her garden in the early afternoon, and chases Tuck away from her flowers. Scrubs the grout in the tub, then sits for a while in the den, fingers plucking at Henry's guitar, then strumming out the cords to "Unlove You."

And then suddenly the sun is low in the sky.

Henry doesn't call.

They should have arrived hours ago, but her phone hasn't rung. She's checked. She tells herself they're having too much fun and he forgot, tells herself that that's good. He should be having fun.

When her phone finally rings, she reaches for it eagerly, but it's a number she doesn't know.

"Hello?" she answers with a frown, and then the bottom falls out of her world.

She hears "Ma'am" and "Maryland Highway Patrol," "your son," and "accident," and she is on her feet and out the door.

She doesn't dress, just grabs her keys and her shoes, her heart beating so hard she can hear it, a quick and horrific _THUD THUD, THUD THUD, THUD THUD_ in her ears, in her limbs.

She drives west, the steering wheel slipping under her sweaty palms, oncoming headlights blinding her every time they pass, and when did it start to rain?

The roads are wet, slippery, her tires skid around a curve and she realizes she's crying. Crying and praying, _Not Henry, please not Henry, not my baby, please not my baby,_ over and over again, she can't _breathe,_ not her _baby._

She should never have agreed to this, should never have let Liam take him, he could have been home, safe and sound in his bed, and instead she's here on this road in the rain, and she can hear sirens now over the drum of the downpour on her rooftop. Distant and blaring and she swears she can hear Henry wailing right along with them.

She takes another turn, a little too fast, her tires screeching and then the headlights go from white to red and blue, flashing lights and too many ambulances, and a car crumpled against a light pole, spotlighted by the bright highbeams of a cop car.

She skids to a stop and throws her door open, runs toward the wreck with a scream of his name, and then there are hands on her, strong hands holding her back, and she hears his voice: "Mom."

Relief floods through her as she turns her head toward the nearest ambulance, and there he is, her baby, her baby boy, sitting in the light of the open doors, in his I DON'T WANNA TACO 'BOUT IT t-shirt and covered in blood.

She lets out a cry and runs to him, wraps him up in her arms, kisses his hair and tastes copper. He's bleeding, there's blood, and she runs her hands through his hair, tries to find the source of it, why hasn't anybody bandaged him up, he is _bleeding_.

She breathes, "Oh, my baby, my baby, you're okay, my baby, you're bleeding, where are you—"

But he shakes his head and says, "I'm not. It's not mine." Regina blinks and really _looks_ at him, and as he says, "It's not my blood," she realizes that it's not. It's streaky, not dripping; there's blood on him, but it's not _his_.

Regina turns toward the car with a sick sort of dread, her heart banging loudly in her chest again as her feet move her numbly toward the twisted metal, the glittering glass.

She knows, somehow she just _knows_ what she will find there. She never saw Daniel in the wreckage; she identified his body in a cold morgue under sickly, blue-tinged fluorescents, all his life drained out, pale and cold and still.

But she'd seen it in her dreams a hundred times, a thousand times, and it's like the commotion, the people, they all fall away, the sirens go silent, she can hear the crunch of glass under her feet as she walks toward the car and thinks _No, no, no, no, not again, not again, please, God, not again…_

The driver's side door is missing, the whole front end an accordioned, steaming, hissing mess, and she walks, walks, walks, every step bringing her closer to her nightmare.

She can see the body in the car, a denim-coated thigh, a slumped-shouldered man draped against the steering wheel, and she takes two more steps before the light reaches his face. Regina lets out a sound like something _wounded_ , and wraps her arms tight around her middle to keep herself upright.

Robin's face, Robin's beautiful, beautiful face is turned toward her, blood running down it in deep red paths, his eyes open and staring at her, blue and still and dead.

She hears the sirens again, they rip up from inside her, red lights and blue lights swirling across red blood and blue eyes, and the spray of glass around him glitters, and—

Regina wakes with a gasp, panting and sweat-slicked, legs and arms straightjacketed in tangled sheets.

She can't breathe, she can't _breathe,_ and she kicks and twists, and fights herself free, rises on shaky legs and stumbles into the bathroom, slaps the light on and slams her eyes shut against the brightness.

She fumbles for the tap and twists it on cold, as far as it will go, her hands shaking as she shoves them under the stream, her stomach rolling in threatening, nauseous waves.

She blinks, blinks, blinks, until she can stand the light, and then she cups that icy water in her palms and splashes it on her face, wets her hands again and runs them on the back of her neck.

She's still shaking, and when she closes her eyes, she sees him again, the blood, and his eyes, and her heart lurches, her _stomach_ lurches, a dry heave she manages to quell as she tells herself silently, _Do not vomit, do_ not _vomit._

Eyes open (she may never close them again), she shoves her hands under the water to cup a mouthful of water in her palm and slurp it up, swallowing down the bile that threatens to rise. Then she splashes her still-flushed face again, runs chilly, damp hands over her chest, her hammering heart.

And then she grips the edge of the sink, finally meets her own terrified eyes in the mirror, and mutters, " _Fuck_."

**.::.**

She doesn't sleep well after the nightmare. Lies in bed for a good long while staring at the ceiling, her chest tight, her throat thick, anxiety pushing tears up against her lashes. She tosses, and she turns, flips her pillow, and kicks her covers off, then pulls them back up to her waist.

Nothing really helps.

So when Regina arrives at therapy at twelve-thirty on Saturday afternoon, she is overtired and irritated – not a great start to a session, that's for sure.

And more than that, she's pissed. At herself, at Archie, at Daniel for dying, at Robin for holding so tightly to a piece of her heart that she has to be afraid of _him_ dying. She can't let go of the sight—the blood, the glass, his lifeless eyes.

Dr. Hopper beckons her into his office as usual, and her rear has barely touched the worn leather surface of his couch before the words are spilling out of her:

"Maybe I _am_ afraid of losing Robin. Maybe I _am_ afraid that after finally finding someone who fits, someone who makes me feel safe, and cared for, that it will all…" Glass. Blood. All that lifeless blue. She swallows heavily and finishes, "That it will end badly. That I'll lose again. Maybe you're right."

She hates when he's right, but he's not right _entirely_ , goddamnit—she is right, too.

"But that doesn't change the very real threat of my mother finding out what he did, it doesn't change the fact that we have no romantic future. So maybe you're right, you might be right, but it makes no difference."

She runs out of steam, and realizes she's breathing heavily, sitting ramrod straight. She's worked herself up into a nice little snit, the sort of tantrum her mother would have cut her down to size for. Pongo is still slinking somewhere near the edge of the coffee table, having halted his usual approach to stand there and watch her pensively.

"And that's not what we're here to talk about today, I just needed to say it. So. Let's start," Regina mutters as embarrassment flushes through her, and she lifts a nervous hand to tuck her hair behind her ear.

She holds out the treat that had been gripped tightly in her other fist, and Pongo takes the peace offering for what it is. He hops up onto the sofa next to her, nabbing the treat from her hand and crunching happily at it as he curls his body against her side.

When she glances over to Dr. Hopper, he's just sitting there. Smirking at her.

Regina scowls. "What?"

"It's nice to see you again, Regina," he says calmly, and she rolls her eyes – God forbid she say what's on her mind instead of making pleasantries from the start. "As you know, we have fifty minutes to talk about whatever you like. Why don't we begin?"

The way he's drawn attention to her rudeness rubs her the wrong way, has her squinting a little and telling him, "Don't be cute."

Dr. Hopper just smiles at her.

"Now that we've gone over what you _don't_ want to talk about today," he says, "what would you like to talk about?"

Regina takes a breath, tries to push her irritation down and focus.

"We're supposed to talk about Sidney," she says, because that had been the plan. She doesn't really _want_ to talk about Sidney, but she _should_.

Her mixed feelings must be evident, because Archie tells her, "There aren't any rules; we can talk about whatever you need to talk about."

Whatever she needs to talk about.

That anxiety that had kept her up all night pinches in the middle of her chest, and she sighs again, sees Robin dead again. She should talk about Sidney, but she can't stop thinking about Robin, worrying about Robin… But does she _want_ to talk about him for another fifty minutes?

(Yes. She does.)

Regina realizes two things at once: one, she's chewing on her thumbnail, a terrible habit that she immediately moves to quell, and two, Archie is still waiting for her to answer him.

"I, um…" she begins aimlessly.

Thankfully, Dr. Hopper takes pity on her, offering her a light nudge with, "How was your homework?"

Now _that_ she can talk about.

"Well, before I was worried that my mother was going to destroy Robin's life, and now I'm just worried that his life will be destroyed, period." She's dripping with sarcasm as she tells him, "So it was peachy. Really helped. I feel a lot better now."

Archie raises an eyebrow at her, thoroughly unfazed by her petulance.

"I dreamed last night that he _died_ ," she tells him, almost ashamed of the pain in her voice as she says it. "That he was dead. Car crash, just like Daniel, only I had to see him, bloody and lifeless, and…" She pushes at the image, tries to shove it down back where it came from and focus on what is _now_ and _real_. "I'm supposed to be focusing on getting _over_ him, on letting him go. Now I want to text him every five minutes just to make sure he's not dead on the side of the road somewhere. Things were already complicated enough."

"Are these rules you're imposing upon yourself—all these things you're supposed to be doing, or not supposed to be doing—helping with that complication?"

"They would if we could stick to them for more than five minutes," Regina grumbles, dropping her gaze to the top of Pongo's head, and running her fingers along his coat.

"Ah, so Robin is struggling with the rules as well," Archie says to her.

"He tries," she admits. "When I'm not sticking his hand down my pants or my tongue down his throat."

A glance in Dr. Hopper's direction finds both his brows lifting higher, higher.

"Was this before or after the decision to 'keep your distance'?" he asks.

"After. It was a month ago. The kissing was more recent—" God, this is stupid, she shouldn't be talking about this. She should be _forgetting it_ and moving on. "Nevermind."

"Are you sure you don't want to talk about it?"

"Why, you want all the details?" Regina sasses him, her own brows lifting in challenge.

"I don't need all the details," Dr. Hopper assures. "But it sounds like this incident is still on your mind, for whatever reason."

Regina shrugs a shoulder and tells him quietly, "It shouldn't have happened."

"Why not? Did he pressure you in any way?"

"No, I kissed him," she tells him with a little sigh. In fact, "It's always me. He was just… trying to be a friend."

She's thinking of that thirty-second 'friendly' snog when Archie asks cheekily, "With benefits?"

Regina rolls her eyes.

" _Before_ the kissing," she clarifies. "The other time – when we… did more." She really hates talking about sex with this man. She doesn't know _why_ , he is her therapist, she has talked to him about nearly every vulnerable wound she has over the last ten years, but something about being frankly honest about her sex life makes her insides wriggle. "I was having a bad night; he was trying to be a friend. He hugged me, and I… did something I knew was stupid, and wouldn't make any of this any easier."

"Did it make you feel better at the time?"

"The first time, yes. It was after my last date with Sidney, after I realized that… I was stupid. What I'd done. And I just couldn't… calm down. I couldn't get the anxiety to go away, not entirely, and he gave me this hug, and things got out of hand. And it helped, at the time, but now…"

Now she doesn't know what the hell to think about it, aside from that it was almost certainly a mistake. A mistake not helped at all by John's knowing looks.

"I guess I'm still a little embarrassed," she tells Archie. "I jumped him with Henry asleep in the next room, I made out with him during my son's _birthday party_." Archie's brows lift a little – more curiosity than judgment – and she explains, "We were alone for a minute away from the kids, and it happened. We reined ourselves in, and then agreed we weren't going to do it again, but two nights ago, I made out with him in the back room of the bar where he works, while Henry was waiting for me. He had people to keep him occupied, but still— Who does that?"

"Someone under extreme amounts of pressure and stress," Archie tells her, perfectly calm and like he doesn't find her behavior abhorrent. "Someone who needs a bit of affection from someone they trust and care about? Sound familiar?"

She feels a tremble in her chin, and the hot prickle of tears as she nods. Yes, it sounds very, very familiar.

She hates how young and… weak… she sounds as she asks, "So it's okay?"

"Of course it's okay," Dr. Hopper tells her; Regina sucks in a shaky breath and blinks, tears spilling over. Relief, or shame, or just…. everything. She dosen't know what, she just knows they're there, and embarrassing.

Dr. Hopper is unbothered by them, though – just hands her a tissue from the box on the table between them and tells her, "You're human, Regina. It's natural to want care, and contact. And it sounds like you were both consenting adults. There is nothing wrong with that."

"I just…" She sniffles, wiping at her tears and wishing they would just _stop_. Her throat is tight as she says, "I screwed up my life so badly. And that first night, I couldn't stop feeling Sidney against me, and I wanted to feel anything else. I wanted to erase everything, and write over it. And at Henry's party, Sidney had just been there, he dropped off gifts for us, and I was rattled, and the other night I had asked Leo to help with the Sidney situation and he told me to deal with it myself, and I just…" Regina shakes her head, sniffles again and then blows her nose lightly, her words a little muffled in her Kleenex when she finishes, "I wanted the comfort."

"Maybe we should talk about Sidney for a minute," Archie suggests, and, well, yes. They should. Clearly. On the upside, maybe it'll give her a chance to get the waterworks under control. She nods as he shifts the notepad on his lap and coaxes, "It sounds like that date was an upsetting experience for you."

"It shouldn't have been," she mutters. "He kissed me goodnight after dinner. Plenty of guys do that. Robin did that."

"But?"

Regina shakes her head slightly, and takes a breath, wipes at one more traitorous tear and then blinks rapidly to clear the rest, balling up the Kleenex in her fist.

She's a bit more calm when she says, "It was like I'd been walking around in a cloud. I'd just… decided that Sidney was the right thing to do, and I knew, I knew in my gut—" She presses her fingers there. "—it just never felt right. But I was determined. And our first date ended in food poisoning, so when he asked for a do-over, I figured… y'know, of course. But then he was kissing me, and it was like… this fog had lifted."

She's been looking at the dog, tracing that snowman-shaped spot with her fingertips, but she looks up at Dr. Hopper now, insisting, "I've never liked Sidney. He's always made me uncomfortable. I have turned him down a dozen times in the last five years. I was so _stupid_ ," she declares, her fingers restlessly fiddling with Pongo's ears while Dr. Hopper takes notes on her terrible decisions. "The whole thing made my skin crawl, and I realized how much I had fucked everything up, and I had a panic attack on the way home, and it just kept… lingering. And then Robin was there. So." She laughs darkly. "That happened."

"Breathe," he urges her gently, and she realizes that she's not. Or rather, that she is, but quickly, a little jerkily. The way she does when she's working herself up to a good panic.

And they can't have that right now—it would waste precious minutes she could spend telling him about her failures.

So Regina takes a slow breath in, and exhales slowly out. Lets herself spend a moment rubbing the silky softness of Pongo's ears as she takes another measured breath.

"It's okay," Archie assures, in that calm, soothing therapist voice. "People make mistakes."

"Well, this one seems to be sticking around."

Archie smiles sympathetically, and then says, "You mentioned in our last session that you think Sidney is stalking you. Can you tell me a bit more about that?"

Where to begin?

Regina takes another deep breath, feeling steadier now, and tries to recount her concerns without working herself up again.

"I keep seeing him places," she explains. "I've run into him several times in the last couple of weeks, and in places I've never seen him before. After that coffee date with my mother a few weekends ago, and at the grocery store – he doesn't live near us, though; he doesn't have any reason to shop on our side of town."

Dr. Hopper frowns slightly, jotting down a few notes as she continues.

"He gave me a lift home from work a couple of weeks ago when I was having car trouble, and then sort of invited himself to dinner with me and Henry—and then tailed me most of the way home afterward."

He looks up at that, asking, "He followed you?"

"He said he was just making sure I got home okay," she says, "but the bar we were eating at was only five minutes away. And then he came to the house last weekend during Henry's party. He said he was just dropping the gifts off, but he wasn't invited; it was a kids' party. And he keeps leaving me little things – candy, or flowers, or a bag of my favorite granola, a gift box of coffee, or... just things. I've told him to stop, but he just changes the gifts. I say no flowers, he brings candy; I say no candy, I get coffee."

"Is this new behavior for him?"

"Showing up uninvited, yes. The gifts…" Her shoulders shift uncomfortably as she admits, "Yes and no. He's always done little things. Brought me something he knew I liked, now and then, or grabbed coffee for both of us from the break room before a meeting. Flowers on occasion. But it's never been this often, and never after I've asked him to keep things professional. And that gift for me he brought to Henry's party was a necklace, and not a cheap one; jewelry is new."

"Have you addressed it with him? Tried to make your feelings clear?"

"Yes. I told him that I don't date coworkers, that I liked our professional relationship the way it was, and that I don't want anything to jeopardize that. He thinks I should make an exception."

"Have you tried phrasing things more directly?"

"I've been as direct as I can be without being impolite, and I have specifically asked him to stop the gifts." Regina frowns, crumpling the tissue in her left hand even further as she laments, "As tempting as it is to break out the Mills family bluntness, I don't feel like that would be good for our working relationship – and I tried to talk to Leo about it, to ask him to step in and help, but he said to handle it on my own. I work closely with Sidney, and I have to _keep_ working closely with him; I don't know how _direct_ I can be and still preserve that."

"But do you think it would change his behavior?" Dr. Hopper asks her.

"Honestly, at this point, I don't even know," she tells him, exasperation and defeat coloring her voice. "Anyone else would have gotten the picture by now."

He gives her something resembling a nod, and points out, "Some men don't understand… nuance."

"Clearly."

Dr. Hopper smirks sympathetically at that, then sobers to ask her, "Do you feel like he is a threat? Has he made you feel concerned for your safety?"

"Not really," she winces, then drawls, "Not unless you count that time he had me pinned to the side of my car."

That must be a red flag, because Dr. Hopper's brows draw together, and he barely shifts, but his posture is suddenly more attentive.

"Did you ask him to stop?" he questions.

"No."

"But you wanted him to?"

Regina nods. God, yes, how badly she had wanted him to.

"Did he try to force himself on you?" Dr. Hopper asks her, and, ah, there's the concern. Right. She should have realized, should have clarified from the start.

"No, I told him I needed to get home to Henry," she dismisses.

"How did he respond to that?"

"He seemed a little disappointed, but he didn't argue." Regina shrugs. "We said goodnight, and I went home."

Dr. Hopper nods absently, scribbles something quickly, and then asks, "Has he been physically forceful since then? Made you feel uncomfortable in any way?"

She feels the phantom grip of Sidney's hand around her forearm in the dairy case, vice-like and clammy, and has to admit quietly, "Yes."

"Can you say a bit more about that?"

"He grabbed me. When we ran into each other at the grocery store, there was this woman, she was rude – we were in the way of what she wanted and she made some snide remarks about it. Sidney wanted her to apologize to me." The memory makes her skin itch, makes her scowl and shift a little in her seat. "I told him it wasn't a big deal and started to walk away, and he grabbed my arm. He didn't want to leave until she said she was sorry."

Dr. Hopper watches her for a moment, concern plain as day on his face, and Regina feels the usual twisting nerves pick up in her gut again, presses a hand there to steady herself.

"But I told him to let go of me, and he did, and I made it very clear that if he ever touched me like that again, I wouldn't be so polite about it. He practically tripped over himself in his rush to apologize."

"I see," Dr. Hopper murmurs, taking pen to paper again. It's more than he usually writes, which concerns her. Usually that means she's given him something particularly meaty to sink his teeth into.

"You're writing a lot."

"I want a record of his behavior with you," he explains. "You clearly have concerns, and not without reason. I want to ensure that we have a record of incidents that have bothered you, and when we discussed them."

"Oh. Okay." That's reasonable. "That day is the only time he's been physical. He makes me... uncomfortable. Uneasy. But I don't think... He doesn't seem... dangerous, per se. Just... overly persistent and with a clear lack of boundaries. He showed up to my son's birthday party, uninvited," she reiterates. "He didn't try to stay, just gave me the gifts and left, but... I worry. The last week or two, I've worried."

"Has he ever been to your house before?"

Regina nods, and tells him, "For our first date – he drove, he picked me up."

Archie jots that down, too, then asks, "What do you worry about?"

Regina sighs, and says, "That he'll keep showing up, keep giving me gifts that I have to politely turn down. That I can't stop him from doing that. That if I am more blunt, there will be consequences."

Archie's head tilts slightly at that. "What sort of consequences?"

"We work together on several accounts. He's always favored me – Sidney – he brought me onto this huge account he bagged a few months ago. It's lucrative." It's currently padding Henry's college fund, and keeping Regina in facials and pedicures. "I'm afraid if I obliterate him, it'll affect my work. And Leo was pretty blunt – I am not to jeopardize the business relationship, no matter how I have to deal with the personal."

It's a mess she doesn't know how she'll get out of – she's already been kind and tactful, she's already been firm and professional. All that's left is risking heartless honesty, but what if that jeopardizes all the things she's worked so hard to build?

She lifts a hand to rake through the hair at her crown, and berates herself, "I never should have gone out with him, I never should have risked all this. I am so stupid."

For a moment Archie frowns at her, then he makes a little mark on his notepad with his pen, and poses a question: "In the time that I've known you, you've always been calculated in your decisions, especially when your love life is involved. What was different about this time?"

It pains her a little to admit, "I was hungover. And sad. I wasn't thinking clearly."

"Sad? About what?"

"Robin. I'd gone to see him play the night before, had too much to drink. I told him I needed to start moving on." She scoffs a little, and mutters, "Made out with him that night, too."

Archie's attentive frown blossoms into a grin that's far too amused for her liking, and she glares at him.

"What?" she asks sharply.

"Nothing," Dr. Hopper insists, forcing that grin down with a light clearing of his throat, and urging, "Go ahead."

"I answered your question."

"I suppose you did," he concedes. "So you were sad about Robin and that pushed you into making the decision to go out with Sidney?"

She nods, and says softly, "I just wanted to stop feeling like this."

"Like what?"

"Like there's a vise in my chest." Her voice squeezes along with that hard fist around her heart, and her eyes water again for a second. "Lonely. Pathetic. Take your pick."

"You're not pathetic, Regina," he tells her kindly. "It's an incredibly brave thing to love someone—"

"I do _not_ love him," she interrupts emphatically, sitting a little straighter in her seat. Pongo lifts his head up, and swings it around to look at her.

"Okay." Archie raises his hands in defense. "But you obviously care about this man, there is nothing pathetic about that."

"I need to get over him," Regina insists, frustration bleeding through as she questions, "Why can't I just get _over_ him? We went on one date!"

"Are you sure you want to?" Dr. Hopper asks her, and she deflates a little, because, no, of course she doesn't _want_ to. What she _wants_ is for Robin to never have put them in this position in the first place.

"What I want doesn't matter," she tells him. "I have to."

"Because of your mother?" he wonders. "Or because you're afraid?"

Regina's jaw clenches and releases. "Because of my mother."

"Maybe we should start with Cora next week then?" Dr. Hopper suggests, and Regina lets out a breath of relief. If he's talking about next week, that means their time is almost up, and she doesn't have to go five rounds with him about whether or not her mother is actually the problem Regina _knows_ she is. "We haven't had a chance to talk about her yet and it seems like she's very involved in this, even if it is indirectly."

She nods a little, tucks her hair behind her ear, and tries to push away the itchy feeling under her skin.

"Okay," she agrees. "I'm having brunch with them tomorrow, so we should have _plenty_ to talk about."

She glances at the clock, then – they're down to their last five minutes, so she asks, "Do I have homework?"

"You've been very anxious today," Dr. Hopper observes. "Would you say you've been anxious a lot lately?"

"I don't know," Regina murmurs, amending to, "I guess," and then admitting, "Yes."

"Journaling," Dr. Hopper tells her, and Regina blows out a breath. Journaling is a pain, but it could be worse, she supposes. "I want you to keep track of the times the anxiety is worse, and think about what might have triggered it. And I'd like you to record at least one positive experience per day."

"Okay." She gives Pongo a little scratch behind his ears as Dr. Hopper reaches into the pocket of his slacks, but when he pulls out a rubber band, she sits straighter, and immediately protests, "No. Not the rubber band."

"Regina, do you realize you called yourself stupid four times in the last fifty minutes?" he asks her, and she feels the hot prickling shame up the back of her neck, down the backs of her arms. "Not to mention pathetic. You've been incredibly self-critical."

"Well, I _was_ stupid," she tells him.

He looks at her pointedly, the little torture device still hanging loosely from his outstretched hand as he says simply, "Five."

"Ugh," she groans, and then she's insisting, "I won't use it. I can tell you right now, even if I leave with that stupid thing on my wrist, I will not snap it once."

"I can't force you, Regina; you have to want to help yourself. You have to want to get better."

"I do want to—" She takes a deep breath, her fingers fiddling restlessly with Pongo's collar. "It makes me feel like a child. It's embarrassing." For good measure, she adds a tart, "And it doesn't go with any of my outfits."

Archie reaches back into his pocket and pulls out a second rubber band. This one is black instead of the usual tan.

Regina stares at it, anger climbing her vertebrae one by one. She practically growls when she tells him, "I say this with the utmost respect for your profession: fuck you."

"Always a pleasure to see you as well, Ms. Mills," he tells her without a hint of bother.

That anger morphs into sweaty-palmed sort of anxiety, and she resorts to begging.

"Please, not the rubber band," she pleads. "Not this week, not right now. Please." It's too much, she already feels… no. No. Anything but that this week. Anything but that when she has to sit down for brunch with _her mother._ "I will write it down," she bargains. "I will write down every terrible thing I say about myself, and read it to you next week like a book report if you want, but please."

"The rubber band isn't meant to help with the things you say, it's supposed to change the way you think about yourself," Dr. Hopper tells her calmly. He's always so fucking calm, and right now she hates it. "If you are vocalising this many things, I can't even imagine how many you're thinking about and not saying aloud. This is not meant as a punishment, Regina."

"It feels like punishment," she insists. "It feels like— it feels like Mother. Constant correction; I hate it. I can't do it right now. I can't spend the next week thinking about how terrible I am on top of everything else."

"It sounds like you're already thinking that way. That's what the rubber band is intended to help you stop doing."

"But I can't snap it in front of other people," she argues. "In front of _Henry_. They'll ask and then what will I say?" She shakes her head, and gives him a clipped and stumbling, "It's embarrassing; I hate it. I'm fine, I don't need it, I'm fine."

But it doesn't _work,_ he is not _listening._ He's too busy telling her, "You tell them the truth. I'm sure Henry would be supportive. He loves you."

The laugh she offers up is rough around the edges.

"I can't do that."

"Yes," he says to her. "You can."

"I don't want him to know I'm like this. You _know_ that."

"Like what? Human?"

"Damaged," she bites off. "I'm his _mother_. He's supposed to grow up in a happy, _healthy_ home."

The opposite of her home. It is supposed to be the _opposite_ of her home. The opposite of a home with a lunatic mother and a weak father. Henry's home is supposed to be safe, and steady, and _happy_ and _healthy_. Not rubber bands and journaling and that hot feeling behind her ears.

"And he is," Archie assures. "Part of that health is your appointments with me, when they are needed."

"And that's all well and good; I don't mind him knowing I have therapy every now and then." She does, but it's a necessary evil. Perfectly normal people go to therapy, that's what she tells herself when she has to explain it to Henry. "But I don't want him to know that I have to snap a rubber band on my wrist every time my brain sounds suspiciously like my mother."

"You don't have to word it exactly that way; you can just tell him it's an exercise to encourage positive thinking and self-assessment."

"That sounds stupid."

For a moment he looks mildly offended, telling her, "I thought it sounded rather articulate."

The idea that she may actually have managed to hit him in a soft spot has Regina looking maybe a touch contrite, but doesn't quite manage an apology. Instead she hedges with, "He's eleven. Those are some big words for eleven."

Archie doesn't miss a beat in pointing out, "I thought you said they were stupid," and Regina rolls her eyes, then catches herself chewing her thumbnail again and forces herself to stop. "He's a very smart boy. You've told me that many times."

She squeezes her thumbs in her palms; they're shaking, she feels shaky. She feels shaky and her breath is quickening, there's spiders under her skin again, shit, _shit_ , no.

Her voice is tense and tight as she tells her therapist, "I feel very agitated right now."

"Okay," he tells her calmly, urging, "Just breathe for a minute."

She tries. Pulls in a breath that's a little too quick to count as deep, but pushes it out slowly. Tries again, but her skin still feels hot.

"I want you to tell me five things you can hear," Archie instructs, and Regina blows out another breath, shutting her eyes for a moment and trying to listen. To just breathe and listen.

At first all she can hear is the whooshing sound of her own inhales and exhales, but that counts, right? So she starts the list with "My breathing…" and then tries to hear past it. Keep breathing, and listen. Keep breathing, and listen. Fortune smiles on her in the form of a traffic snare, someone's horn blaring from two stories below them. "That horn on the street…" becomes number two.

And then it's just… nothing. Her breathing (still too quick), and the hum of, "The air conditioner…"

Her brow knits as she tries to focus, but there's nothing else, how is she supposed to get to five when it's just them sitting in this room?

She squirms a little, and then looks to Archie for help with a crestfallen, "It's quiet in here."

"Just keep your eyes closed and focus," he urges. "You can do this. Five things."

Regina nods and squeezes her eyes shut again, running down the list. "My breathing, the horn on the street, the air conditioner…" Focus, _focus_ , just breathe and focus. The air conditioner hums, her breaths sound in, and sound out. Pongo nudges his nose against her thigh, and his collar clinks slightly, a soft swishing thump following it.

"Pongo wagging his tail against the couch…" she says, and then she listens for something else. Anything else.

God, this is stupid. Useless. She is stupid. Useless.

The thought makes her want to cry, makes her think of that stupid rubber band, and every time her stupid mother has called her a stupid girl, and she cannot _focus_ with that woman in her head.

"My mother in my head every minute of the damn day," she rants, opening her eyes again, and exhaling heavily, frustrated. This isn't working.

Archie shocks her by telling her, "Okay, I'll let that last one slide, but just for today."

She blinks at him, and asks, "Really?"

"You're a bit tense, even for you," he says. "And I'm not in the habit of being unnecessarily cruel to my patients."

She wants to snark at that, but she doesn't, because she knows it's true. Acute anxiety sharpens her tongue, she knows that, and he's trying to help. So she keeps her mouth shut, and shifts a little, leather creaking beneath her as she does.

As soon as she hears it, she gives him a proper answer: "The couch squeaks."

"Good," he praises, with a proud smile that warms his whole face. It loosens some of the tension in her chest. She can do this; this isn't that hard. "That's good, Regina. Now, four things you can touch."

She runs her fingers along Pongo's head, and he tips his head up to lick at them, his tongue warm and soft and damp against her fingertips. She smiles a little, and lists, "Pongo," and then, "The couch." Because why overlook the obvious?

For a moment, she frowns, her fingers anxiously kneading the balled up Kleenex he'd offered her earlier, as she tries to come up with something.

And then she realizes she has the answer literally in the palm of her hand, and supplies, "The tissue."

Stupid. It was obvious, and she was so stupid, getting in her own way, not letting herself just _relax,_ and _focus,_ and not be… stupid.

She takes a moment to think that it's a really good thing Dr. Hopper cannot hear what she's thinking, because she's pretty sure that was about five 'stupid's in the past five minutes. He may be onto something with her self-destructive thought patterns. He usually is; it's not the first time he's given her this particular assignment. She gets it every few years or so, when she's hitting a rough patch and takes it out on herself.

Henry never notices. Nobody ever notices. (Mother would notice, but she flat out refuses to wear it when Mother is around, so that solves that.)

She looks at Dr. Hopper for a moment, indecision making her pensive and tense. And then she sighs, and holds out her hand and completes her list of four things she can touch with, "That goddamn rubber band."

"Good, Regina – good," he praises again, and she wishes it wasn't so fucking comforting. Wishes that she wasn't so starved for praise that she'll take it from her therapist or from the man she is Not Dating, because who else besides Daddy is ever going to make her feel worthwhile?

Her eyes water a little as she slips the rubber band onto her right wrist, fidgeting with it as she rolls her neck and takes a deep breath. It's fine, it's just a little ring of elastic. It's _fine_.

"This isn't punishment, this is part of your self-care. Accepting it is a healthy step," Archie reminds her, and she nods. Not punishment. Self-care. Self-correction. Healthy step. "I know you've been frustrated today, but you should be proud of yourself for making your emotional wellbeing a priority – even when that feels overwhelming. Now, you're doing great with this exercise."

Regina scoffs. She's slowed her breathing mostly, but her skin still feels too tight, and her armpits are itchy with sweat.

"It may not feel that way, but you are," Dr. Hopper encourages. "You know what comes next: Tell me three things you can see."

Regina takes another breath, and looks around the room. This is always the easy one.

"My purse," she says. She'd left it on the coffee table today. Across the room, she sees, "The bookshelf," and a quick sweep offers up, "Your umbrella by the door, even though it's not supposed to rain today."

Dry as a bone outside, but that black umbrella is always there next to the door. Rain or shine.

Archie smiles slightly, and says, "Okay. Now two things you can smell?"

Smell is harder. She focuses again, but it's easier this time, easier to breathe in deeply through her nose, and come up with, "Coconut – that candle you always have burning that makes this place smell like a Tommy Bahama." She's gone a little noseblind to it, to be honest, but she knows it's there. "And…"

She's been running her fingers up and down Pongo's neck, lets them run up to scratch that spot between his eyes that he likes. His head tilts up at her and she catches the faint hint of doggy breath. Regina looks down at him and frowns. She always answers Pongo; it feels a bit like cheating.

But she catches of whiff of lavender as she drops her head, and answers, "My shampoo."

"Good. And finally, one thing you can taste."

Regina presses her lips together, licks them and tastes passionfruit.

Her shoulders have loosened. Her skin doesn't feel so tight. She's calmer now.

"Lip balm," she answers.

"Good." Mission accomplished. "Speaking of taste, what are your plans for dinner?"

Tension roars up her spine again, twists in her belly, and Regina scrunches her eyes shut, brow pinching.

"What is this, Pour Salt In All Regina's Wounds Day?" she complains. "Why are you asking me about food right now?"

"Your anxiety levels are fairly high at the moment, that can usually trigger some of your other problems," Archie tells her, and, well, no shit. "I just wanted to check in."

Her thumb is at her mouth again before she can stop it, but the second it touches her lip she pulls it away and balls it in a fist again. She will _not_ do this; she just got herself calmed down.

Which means they can talk about food. Fine. _Fine_. She will _talk_ about food.

"It's Saturday night; Henry will probably try to talk me into pizza."

"And what do you feel like having?"

It goes without saying, but she says it anyway: "Not pizza."

"So what is your alternative?" Dr. Hopper asks.

The anxiety is rising again; she doesn't want to talk about this, she just wants to go home. She doesn't want to talk about this, because the honest answer is ugly and unkind to herself. Right now she'd rather starve than choke down a single bite of pizza, but that is irrational, she _knows_ it is, that is just the anxiety talking. That is just the _disorder_ talking, and she is stronger than it.

She is anxious, she is struggling, she is officially having a Bad Day. But she is stronger than it.

But Dr. Hopper is still waiting for an answer, and all she manages is a darkly muttered, "Lock myself in the bathroom and snap this stupid rubber band until my wrist bleeds."

"And when you leave the bathroom?" he asks, undeterred. "What do you plan on _eating,_ Regina?"

Regina sits there and tries to come up with something, but it's like her mind has gone blank. The answer is _Nothing_ , she is planning on _Nothing_ , she wants _Nothing._ But she can't answer 'nothing,' because that is not an acceptable answer. It's not an acceptable dinner, and she knows that, and just this morning she had been perfectly fine combing the fridge for dinner options, but right now she is two minutes out of a mild anxiety attack, and she cannot _think_ about _food._

This is stupid. She is stupid. She is _recovered_ , and this is _ridiculous,_ this is just a moment of bad anxiety, and she is being childish and stubborn and obstinate and _stupid—_

It takes her a moment to _hear_ herself, caught up as she is in hating herself, but she does finally recognize her own critical inner monologue for what it is. Critical. Hateful. Mother-ish.

Unhealthy.

She's angry – at herself, at him, at her mother for making her this way.

And she's owed a good snap, so Regina says nothing, does not give him an answer aside from looking him dead in the eyes, drawing that rubber band taut and letting it snap back hard.

"See. I knew you could do it," Archie tells her, all kindness and pride and she could just spit in his face for it.

"God, I hate you sometimes," she bites through grit teeth.

"You still haven't answered my question, Regina."

He is not letting her get out of this one. They're over time already—her little episode had ensured that—but her tongue is glued to the roof of her mouth over a very simple question, and she knows better than to think he'll let her leave without an answer.

She attempts to buy time with, "I'm trying to think of what I have in the fridge," and it goes over like a lead balloon.

He just says, "Odd. You usually know everything you have in the fridge, and the cabinets, and your purse, and the car…"

Bastard.

"Aren't we over time?" she tries, because she doesn't _want_ to talk about this right now. She wants to go home. She will eat a proper fucking dinner, but right now, she wants to go home.

"We started late last week, and I have a few minutes to spare," Archie tells her easily.

Right. Not getting out of here.

Fine. Let's just get this over with.

She knows the answer to this, she _does_ , she has been in far too much therapy not to know. So she takes what she hopes looks like a steadying breath and tells him very deliberately: "I should get pizza for Henry, because food isn't bad, or good, it's just food."

"Just because you can parrot that back at me doesn't mean you will follow through," Archie tells her and she grits her teeth again. "Just because you feel like you _should_ get pizza for Henry doesn't mean you're actually going to eat any of it if you do. Or that it will stay in your stomach."

Her gaze snaps to his at that, hot and accusatory, as she argues, "You know I don't like to purge. I don't like vomiting, you _know_ that. I haven't purged in years."

Because, yes, this is a bad day now, fine, okay. But she won't be accused of things she does not do. She _will not._

"I do know that," he answers calmly. "We both know that. So, before I let you leave, what do you plan on eating tonight?"

She needs to have an answer. And it needs to be a real one; he's not accepting cagey.

And he shouldn't. It's his job not to, and she knows that.

So she will answer this. It's just a meal, and she is _recovered_ , this is just anxiety, she is just anxious and tired, and she needs to get _out_ of here, so she can think, and so she can eat, so she can think about eating and not about everything she is _feeling…_

For a minute, she sits quietly, plays with Pongo's ears and breathes in and out on four-counts until she feels less pent up. And then she thinks back to this morning, and what was in the fridge, and she makes herself a plan. A healthy plan, that will get her to dinner. Sanely.

"I will go home," she begins carefully, because she really, really needs to go home right now. "And I will send Henry to Robin's for a little while," because she would rather die than have him see her in the grips of anxiety she cannot shake. "And I will read a book, or play piano, or lay on my bed and count backward from 400," until she is calm. And rational. And relaxed. "And then if he wants pizza, we will order pizza, and I will eat a slice, because I won't feel the way I feel right now anymore. And if he doesn't want pizza, I will make veggie stir fry with brown rice."

She's said the whole thing while staring very hard at her purse on the table in front of her, but she glances at Archie for approval then, and he gives her a little nod.

Then screws the whole thing again by questioning, "A slice? Or two? One slice of pizza isn't much to have for dinner."

Regina rolls her eyes so hard her whole head rolls heavenward, the tentative peace she'd scraped together for herself hanging on tenterhooks.

"Can you text me this question at about five o'clock tonight?" she asks Archie, exasperated now. She needs to go _home_. "I feel like my answers will be much more to your satisfaction when I've been out of this fucking office for a few hours."

"You have the number for my work phone, you can check in any time," he says. "But I would like you to have a plan before you leave this 'fucking office.'"

"I told you my plan. You took issue with it."

"I have concerns with it and asked for clarification," he rephrases, in that way he does that she hates. "It is ultimately your choice, I just want to make sure you are thinking clearly about the choices you are making."

But she can't think clearly right now. She just… she can't. She recognizes it, but she can't. Regina rubs a hand over her mouth, then back into her hair, shakes her head, and tells him, "I think I'll feel better in a little while. This has been a hard day; I need some time to decompress."

"That's understandable. You had a pretty intense session today." Understatement. "You should take a little time when you get home, have some dedicated self-care and relaxation."

She needs it, she knows she does. It was part of the plan she'd just laid out, because she _knows_ that this level of anxiety is a trigger. She has to manage it, it has to be the first thing she does when she leaves here, or it will tank the rest of her day.

But there's Henry to think about, and right now thinking about him just hurts. She feels… inadequate. Broken. Like he deserves a mother who isn't so twisted up and damaged.

Her eyes well up, but she blinks the tears away, giving the rubber band a light snap before she swallows thickly and confesses softly, "This is one of those times I don't love being a mom."

Archie looks at her with sympathy, but no judgement, offering more reassurances: "And, as we've talked about before, that's completely normal. _But_ , it sounds like you have a bit more of a support system now—complicated, but supportive."

She makes a face, eyes widening in a silent expression of _You can say that again_.

And then she asks him a question that's been nagging at her: "But is it – and I know we're way over time, so we don't need to get into it – but is it counterproductive to keep calling him for things like this? He'll do it in a heartbeat – hell, he'd come over and cook, it wouldn't be the first time – but… I keep telling him I want space, and then calling him anyway."

"Why don't you worry about one thing at a time?" Archie suggests. "Right now, it seems more important that you have the support – that you have someone you can trust, that you feel safe around, who can help you with Henry and afford you the necessary time you need to look after yourself as well."

Okay. That makes sense. It makes sense, and it makes some of that tightly-wound tension unspool inside of her.

Archie continues, "Thievery and dishonesty aside, Robin seems like a good man who cares a great deal for you and your son. It's okay to let someone care about you, Regina. It's okay to want that and to take that sometimes."

Her shoulders finally sag then – relief, she thinks. It's okay to call Robin. It's okay to lean on him today. It's okay to allow herself to take care of herself, even if it means calling Robin. She's allowed to… do that, to feel that. To lean a little.

And thank God, because maybe that means she can stop feeling so _guilty_ all the time. Maybe she can stop feeling bad for trying to feel better.

"Taking that feels really good, when it isn't breaking my heart," she admits, fiddling with the rubber band around her wrist.

Robin will see this, she realizes. He notices everything, he will notice this. Maybe he won't know what it means, maybe it won't stand out to him. But then again, maybe it will. And then she'll have to explain it to him.

She waits for the niggling climb of anxiety to resurface at the prospect, but somehow it doesn't. She twists the strip of rubber around her fingertip, and thinks of eggs in her kitchen, and warm fingers scratching at the back of her neck, and the way his beard tickles the bridge of her nose when he kisses her brow.

And then she smiles a little, and says, "You know, if he asked about this, I wouldn't be ashamed to tell him. I think he and my father may be the only two people in the world I wouldn't be ashamed to tell."

The corner of Archie's mouth curves up slightly, and his brows rise just a hair behind his glasses.

"I think that answers a lot of your questions right there," he tells her, and maybe it does. "But that's something we can save for next week."

"Right," she sighs. "Next week. How long do you think it's going to be until you stop ending sessions by telling me I'll see you next week?"

"I think that depends on you."

Regina exhales heavily and admits, "I'm exhausted. And I'm keeping you."

Archie just shrugs, like he doesn't mind that she's dragged him in here on a weekend and then kept him long because she is a basketcase. Like he doesn't have better things to do.

But they both do, and they are done here (she needs to be done here), so she gives Pongo a few final pats to his shoulder, and then scoots forward and reaches for her purse.

She pauses when Archie speaks again, offering her one last bit of reassurance: "It's going to be okay, Regina."

She nods a little, but it isn't terribly genuine.

"I'll take your word for it," she says, shouldering her purse, and standing before she tells him, "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go call the man I'm not seeing."

Dr. Hopper just smiles and says, "I'll see you next week. Drive safely."

**.::.**

The solitude of her car has never been more welcome, and for a few minutes after Regina shuts the driver's side door, she just sits there. Tips her head back against the headrest, closes her eyes and simply takes in the silence.

She feels like shit.

Therapy is like this sometimes – draining. Leaves her feeling scraped out instead of simply unburdened. Usually, she can predict when days like this are coming – she likes to think she's relatively self-aware, at least enough to know when something she wants to unpack in therapy is going to leave her with a dire need for a drink, a bubble bath and a good cry. Those are the days she usually asks Mary Margaret to stay an extra hour and takes herself out for a glass of wine before she heads home, or even better, gives her enough money to cover two movie tickets and popcorn and gets the house to herself for a while.

But she hadn't called Mary Margaret today. Henry is eleven now, he's getting older – old enough to mind himself for a couple of hours in the middle of the day. He has all the emergency numbers, and she knows Robin is expecting Roland today, so he should be home. And Granny Lucas is just down the block if Henry needs another adult.

So she'd left him home alone.

It was a stupid idea; she should have known after the night she'd had that today's session would be rough. That she'd want a buffer when she left therapy, and that she would feel too guilty to leave Henry alone for _too_ long.

And she's paying for that stupidity now – sitting here in her car like an idiot, trying to soak in a few minutes of silence before she has to go home and pretend she doesn't feel the way she feels right now.

It occurs to her that she's engaging in negative self-talk. That rubber band should be getting a snap.

Regina opens her eyes and lifts her head, then stares at the menacing little thing.

There's nobody here. Nobody will know.

She takes a breath, gives the elastic a slow pull and then lets it snap back for a biting little sting. It doesn't hurt much, but her eyes water anyway. It's shame, not pain, and she tells herself one more time what Dr. Hopper had told her: it's not punishment, it's self-care. It's encouraging positive thought and self-assessment. (That really _does_ sound stupid – at least when it comes from her.)

She doesn't know how she let herself get here. To this place of constant anxiety and tension. She knows the _reasons_ , but she has been through worse. She's been through break-ups before – ones that came after actual relationships. Her mother has been this bad, or worse. She's dealt with Sidney and the way he wants her just a little too much. Hell, she made it through Daniel dying. (It had been hell, and there had been days like this – plenty of them – but at least they'd felt _warranted_ then. Now she just feels….)

There's a word at the forefront of her mind, but she doesn't let herself think it.

If she does, she'll have to snap the rubber band again, and she is genuinely afraid that she is still orbiting the edges of an anxiety attack that will have her snapping again and again and again. It'll only make things worse.

There's self-care and then there's self-torture, and she just can't handle the goddamn rubber band right now.

There are other ways she can care for herself. Other things she can do.

Starting with lunch.

Her stomach twists, a pinching, sloshing sort of feeling, like everything is rising.

Regina amends her plan: Starting with relaxation.

Acute anxiety is a trigger for her, she knows that. And this is acute anxiety, this crawling, knotting, can't-catch-her-breath feeling. She has to manage the anxiety before she can manage the rest. She has to _think_ , damnit.

Self-assess. Plan of action. Execute.

Regina forces herself to breathe slowly, and take stock of herself. She's tired, and there's a little pulsing throb at the base of her skull, a tension headache brewing that could blossom into a migraine if she doesn't let herself rest. She's thirsty, too, she realizes. Maybe she'll stop for an iced coffee (black, extra strong, no sugar – no, that'll keep her from napping if she needs to. No coffee. Iced tea.)

Iced tea, then home, and rest.

Which means she needs quiet, and no pressure. No Henry.

Her fingers are shaky as she fishes her cell phone out of her purse, and it annoys her. Weak. Weak, and stupid, and—

She glances at the rubber band at her wrist, and tells herself she'll snap the damn thing later. Right now she needs to make a call.

She takes another deep breath as the phone rings once, twice, and then Robin's voice comes over the line in a quick, "Hello?"

The sound of his voice rushes over her like a wave sweeping up onto a beach, and takes the sandy grit of her what-if-he's-dead-on-the-side-of-the-road-somewhere anxiety with it as it ebbs. Something between her shoulder blades loosens, finally.

"Hey, it's me," she greets him.

Her voice isn't as steady as she'd like it to be – it's a little breathy, there was a slight tremble to it. And he must have noticed, too, because he asks her, "You alright?"

"Not really," she admits. "I just got out of a... very exhausting therapy session. I could really use an hour to myself; I know it's your time with Roland, but could I send Henry over for a while when I get home?"

His answer is immediate and easy: "Of course, always."

Regina lets out a relieved breath, and offers a fervent, "Thank you."

"You sure you're alright?" he asks again, concern coating the lilt of his voice.

"I'm fighting an anxiety attack that doesn't want to go away," she tells him, barely more than a whisper. "I just need some peace and quiet, and… time alone. Until it passes."

"I could go grab Henry now if you want," he offers. "Take the boys out for ice cream, or a movie or something."

"You don't mind?"

"Not at all," Robin says, and she hears soft laugh before he teases, "It's that or walk the dog around the block for the third time this afternoon."

Regina chuckles a little, says, "Thank you. Again. He's at home, alone. Tell him I said it's okay."

"Will do," he answers, and she shuts her eyes again, just enjoying the sound of his voice, the way he is safe and sound and relaxed as he asks, "Is there anything else I can do to help?"

Her first thought is that she wants his arms wrapped around her. Wants to press her nose into his shoulder and breathe and have him scratch at the back of her neck the way he had the other night, the way that makes goosebumps rise up her back, and arms, and… other parts. But considering what had happened the last two times she's done that, it's probably unwise.

 _It'snatural to want care and contact,_ comes to her, Dr. Hopper's voice echoing and following up with, _It's okay to want that and to take that sometimes._

And she _wants_ to, but… Mother.

Plus, he has Roland and no matter how flippant her therapist had been about them necking with the kids nearby, Regina doesn't want that.

She can get through a weekend without Robin's lips on hers.

So she opts for a different kind of comfort instead, requesting, "Can you… tell me something good about me? I need something to focus on for a minute, and your voice is…" 'Soothing' is what she wants to say, but she's let herself be a little too raw already. So she simply says, "I like it. And I could use a… boost."

"Of course, love," he says to her, and there's something about his voice. A tone or timbre, something… sweet. Intimate, maybe? She lets herself focus on it, taking measured breaths to ease the last of her anxiety.

"I'm not really sure where to start," Robin admits. "So many options…"

Right now it doesn't feel like there could possibly be that many.

Regina swallows hard and asks, "Try…"

She needs words like a balm right now, something to soothe her scraped up, raw heart. She doesn't care what he picks, she just wants a bit of kindness.

"I'm thinking, love," Robin teases her; she can hear the smile in his voice (wishes she could see it on his face). And then he says, "Mm. I know," and makes her breath catch with, "You're very brave."

"Brave?" she questions, her voice breaking. She's half-crying on the phone with him; he's crazy if he thinks she's _brave_ , of all things.

But he just hums and affirmative, and explains, "You were brave enough to leave home, try to start a new life away from your Mum."

Regina scoffs, mutters, "And look where it got me."

"Yes, let's look," he urges, and then he's listing out all the good things in her life. It's not a long list, but she tries to absorb them all anyway: "A lovely home, and a wonderful son. A good job, a comfortable life. I know it's hard right now, and I'm sorry for that. I know it's my fault—"

"It's not entirely your fault," she interrupts. She can't blame him for Mother, or really for Sidney. Maybe she wouldn't have ended up on a date with him if it hadn't been for Robin, but this must have been there all along. Deep down. Lurking.

Robin tells her, "I know that, but I also know I'm not helping matters any," and then pushes ahead before she can argue. "But we're not talking about that right now. We're talking about how brave you are."

Regina sighs softly and listens.

"Raising a boy all by yourself. Living alone, taking care of your whole life." The first one is an accomplishment – her proudest accomplishment – but the rest, that's just surviving. "Taking a chance on the idea that the man who broke into your home might be worth more than the gum on the bottom of a shoe, and giving him an opportunity to try to be better. That was brave." Robin pauses for a moment, and then he tells her gently, "And I have to imagine a person's got to be just a little bit brave any time they ask for help. Like you did right now. Calling and telling me how you feel, and what you need, that's brave. Not everyone can do it."

She'd been managing to keep the tears at bay up until now, but that last compliment has them welling up and spilling over before she can stop them. Her "It doesn't feel brave," is wet and thick.

"Maybe not, but it is," Robin assures her. "You're a brave woman, Regina. One of the bravest I've ever met. I'm sorry you're struggling today, but you're a hell of a woman. You'll be alright."

Dr. Hopper had told her the same thing, and she'd struggled to believe it. She struggles to believe it now, too, but she finds it still helps. Hearing it from someone who isn't paid to say it is comforting.

"Thank you," she sniffles.

His voice is penitent when he says, "I didn't mean to make you cry. I was trying to make you feel _better._ "

"You did," she assures him, because he has. She may be wiping tears off her cheeks, but she can breathe now. The anxiety has ebbed away, for the most part. "I have a little bit of an anxiety hangover right now. The tears are close to the surface, it's easy to make me blubber."

"I wouldn't call this blubbering," he tells her, as she wipes at another tear and sniffles again. She needs to blow her nose – and sleep, before this crying jag combines with all her stress and triggers a migraine.

Robin seems to have the same idea, urging her, "At any rate, why don't you go home and have a bit of a lie down? Let me handle the boys. You can text when you're ready for Henry to come home."

"I will," she murmurs, taking a deep breath and blinking away what she hopes are the last of her tears. "Thank you."

"Anytime." She smiles at the sincerity in his voice, and then he's saying, "And Regina?"

"Hmm?"

"I didn't want to lead with this, because your looks aren't the only good thing about you," he begins, and her heart does a stuttering little knock at what could be coming. "Far from it. But just in case it's the kind of boost you need – I can't stop thinking about how gorgeous you were the other night, and I think I'm going to dream about your arse in that skirt for the rest of my natural life."

Regina can feel the way her cheeks have gone warm, and she laughs softly at him.

"But it's your eyes I can't stop thinking about. They're lovely up close. All of you is just… so bloody lovely up close."

She smiles, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip for a moment, and then she gives him another quiet, "Thank you. You, too. And you smell really, really good."

"Yeah?" he chuckles, apparently pleased by this news.

"Mmhmm. Like clean laundry and… Christmas trees. I like it."

She really, desperately hopes that it doesn't sound as silly to his ears as it does to hers, but she can't seem to stop the words from passing her lips, and he's been so complimentary of her during their conversation. He deserves a little boosting of his own.

They say their goodbyes, finally.

Regina takes another deep breath in, and then out, and starts the car. She stops for that iced tea, sucking it down as she drives and trying to make a point to savor the cool, refreshing taste of it.

Focus on the little things, enjoy the little things. Make it home, and then sleep.

The house is empty when she arrives. Blessedly silent. Peaceful.

That throbbing at the back of her skull has worked its way up to a dull ache, and she's determined to battle it with a nice long catnap (something she finally thinks she's worked her anxiety low enough to accomplish).

She climbs the stairs to her bedroom, already unbuckling the belt around her hips, toeing her shoes off as soon as she steps into her bedroom. She coils the belt up and sets it on her dresser – she'll put it away later – and then she turns a bit as she twists to unzip her dress, and freezes at what she's just seen.

On the end of her bed, there's a hoodie that absolutely does not belong to her and wasn't there this morning.

Regina frowns and pads over toward it, lifting the soft material from the bed. It's grey, with red along the zip and in the hood, and GUNNERS printed on one side of the chest above a little graphic of a cannon. Roland has a shirt with the same image on it, red with the word ARSENAL blazed across it.

This is Robin's, it must be, but why is he leaving her clothing?

She scowls, and then her breath catches with realization, fingers clenching a little more tightly into the material and bringing it to her nose. It smells like clean cotton and forest pine – he's worn this.

She should probably find it creepy that Robin is leaving her laundry, but she doesn't. She finds it sweet, far too touching for her own good. A little bit of him for her to bury her nose into and indulge without all that pesky touching that gets them into trouble.

It doesn't take Regina long to slip out of her dress, and into a tank top and shorts; she pulls the hoodie on over the tank top, shoving too-long sleeves up past her wrists long enough for her to draw the zipper up.

And then she crawls on top of her covers, wraps herself around a pillow, and buries her nose in the sleeve of Robin's shirt.

It's not quite the same as one of those hugs that makes her feel so safe and so anxious in turns, but it'll do just fine.

She's asleep in minutes.

**.::.**

Regina sleeps like a rock and wakes slowly, exactly where she fell asleep. Her torso is pleasantly warm, her bare legs a little cold, and she keeps her eyes closed as she rolls onto her back and stretches.

She relaxes back into her covers, her forearm landing on her brow with a faint whiff of forest, and for a brief, weak moment she turns her face into her arm and breathes him in again.

And then she unzips, and leaves the hoodie behind, trades shorts for leggings and a sports bra and heads down to the den to run for a while.

By evening, she feels better. Lighter.

Robin had texted while she was on the treadmill and told her he'd gotten last-minute cheap seats to an Orioles game, so they'd not be back until Roland absolutely needed to be in bed. (It's a 7:05 game, and he's three, so as far as Regina's concerned, he should last about an hour, but it's Robin's kid, not hers, and if he wants to deal with an overtired toddler in the morning, well, that's his problem.) As a result, she's had plenty of time to decompress.

She's slept, and exercised, and started a load of laundry. Showered, and put on another pair of leggings and that Arsenal hoodie, since nobody is home to see it. And then she'd paid a few bills, read half a chapter of a book, and spent some time in the kitchen.

But with a clearer head comes perspective, and her run had given her plenty of time to realize that this morning was not exactly a shining moment in her ten years of therapy with Dr. Hopper.

So somewhere during the first inning, after Robin has texted her a picture of all three of them in Orioles caps and big grins, Regina curls up in her favorite chair and pulls up Dr. Archie Hopper in her contacts.

She breaks off a small piece of warm, gooey brownie from the napkin on her knee and chews it as the phone rings.

Dr. Hopper picks up on ring number three. "Hello?"

"Hi, it's Regina Mills," she tells him, even though she's certain he has all of his patients' numbers in his work phone. "I'm not interrupting your dinner, am I?"

"No, no," he assures. "I'm free."

She smiles, and says, "Good. I wanted to tell you about _my_ dinner. Since you were so interested earlier."

"I'm still interested now," he says kindly, and then he asks, "How was your dinner, Regina?"

"Robin took the boys to a baseball game, so I had dinner alone. I had a salad with some chicken breast, and goat cheese, and pecans, and then I made brownies for Henry and I'm having half of one right now while I talk to you."

Good choices. Healthy choices. And a treat. Crisis averted, bad day resolved.

"Good," Dr. Hopper praises. "That's good, Regina."

Her mouth is still sweet and chocolatey, and she tells herself that this will be a brief call, so she can get back to indulging. Back to her self-care. Maybe she'll finish that chapter of her book before the dryer buzzes.

She tells Dr. Hopper, "I just needed some time to calm down. When I'm keyed up, it's hard for me to think about food."

"That's also when you are at the most risk of making self-destructive decisions," he points out, and she frowns. He doesn't have to tell _her_ that. "It's important to retrain your thinking patterns. If stress triggers your self-critical inner voices, you need to have ways of coping, ways of altering your thinking and pushing through."

"I know," she says, mildly annoyed and letting it creep through. "I've been doing this for twenty years; I know."

"I know, but a reminder never hurts," he tells her, and if he can hear her displeasure, he doesn't make a big deal out of it. There's a moment of dead air between them, and then he asks, "Was there something else you wanted to talk about?"

"Yes, actually," she says. "I wanted to… apologize. For earlier." She sets the brownie aside for now, and tells him, "I think I maybe made today's session more difficult than it needed to be. I was…" Bitchy. "Well, I suppose my mother would say something along the lines of 'obstinate and childish'. I've just had a lot on my mind, as you know."

Her phone buzzes lightly against her ear, another text coming through. Probably Robin; she doesn't check it. Instead, she fiddles absently with the zipper of his hoodie, admitting, "Some things that I thought were… straightforward… maybe aren't. And I took that out on you. And I know that's what I pay you for, but it's not _really_ what I pay you for." It's not really his job to take her sass and abuse – it's his job to help her sort through her jumbled emotions. "So I'm apologizing. Like a mature adult."

"Thank you," he tells her, and, "Apology accepted."

Forgiveness granted, just like that. Although it always is with Archie, and she thinks maybe that's part of why she likes him so much. She can make mistakes, apologize, and move on, and know that they won't be used against her three months down the line when she's least expecting.

He says, "And thank you for the call," and then, "I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening, Regina. I'll see you on Wednesday."

She promises that yes, he will, and they say their goodbyes. And then Regina picks up the rest of that brownie, and savors it bite by delicious bite.

**.::.**

Robin brings Henry home around nine-thirty, having already deposited a sacked out Roland in his own bed next door.

Henry is tired, too, yawning as he toes out of his shoes and tells her all about how they saw a grand slam, and how he had a whole bunch of popcorn. Apparently, they had gotten a whole bucket of it. (She glances at Robin, who grins guiltily enough that she figures she doesn't need to remind him that popcorn does not a dinner make.)

She's just glad to see him – Robin – standing there in front of her, in a black Orioles t-shirt and shorts, a little sun-kissed and without a drop of blood anywhere on him. She's managed to calm herself since therapy, but that dream had walloped her hard.

The need to touch him, just to be sure of him, is acute, aching. She's fairly certain she interrupts Henry's retelling of something game-related when she says, "Why don't you go upstairs and brush your teeth." Another glance at him has her adding, "And take a shower. Your knees are dirty."

He's in shorts, too, smudgy grass stains on his bare knees – Robin had mentioned something about having been at the park when he'd called earlier about the game. At least Henry will sleep well tonight, after a day full of so much fresh air and sunshine.

But for now, he sulks slightly at the prospect of bed, thanking Robin for taking him to the game before he trudges past Regina and up the stairs.

She feels just a little bit bad for sending him off on his way, but the blood…

Regina wants Robin alone, just for a minute – just long enough to make sure he's okay. In the interest of privacy, they end up on the porch. The last thing she needs is Henry to come back downstairs and overhear them talking.

Not that they do much talking.

The minute they're alone, her hands are on him. Pressed to the warm cotton over his belly, swooping up his chest, his neck, into his hair. Dry as a bone, not a drop of blood on him, and those blue eyes are bright and lively as he smiles curiously at her.

"Not that I'm complaining, but is everything alright, babe?" he asks her.

Regina shakes her head, scratches her nails lightly against his scalp and watches him shiver.

"I dreamt that you died," she tells him, and then there are warm hands on her hips, solid and squeezing as he assures her that he's right here, very much alive. Her eyes water as she breathes, "It felt so real. It was just like Daniel."

"It didn't happen," he promises, and he draws her in just the way she loves, the way she's wanted all day. His fingers weave into her hair, trace soothing swirls and wandering patterns all over the base of her skull, the back of her neck, his chin resting against her brow. She can feel his chest expand with an easy breath in, and turns her head to the side, resting her cheek against it as he exhales. Her arms wind around his waist, pressing even closer, until she can hear it underneath her ear: his heartbeat.

Steady, and strong, and very much alive.

For a minute, they just stand there and rock, bodies swaying lazily in the porchlight as she absorbs the warmth of him, savors the breath in his lungs, memorizes the rhythm of his heart.

There are crickets chirping somewhere, and the air has gone a bit muggy. She's warm where they're pressed together, feels sweat start to bloom between her breasts. It should be uncomfortable, she thinks. But it's not. She's not. She is very, very comfortable.

The kissing was inevitable.

He'd asked her if she felt better now, and her head had tilted up as his tilted down, their lips meeting like gears rolling seamlessly together, an easy rhythm, rending and sewing slowly. No rush, and none of the pulsing tension of the last time they'd kissed. Just lazy reassurances found in the cheap-beer taste of his tongue, the hint of salt on his lips. The strength of his hands against her.

She's allowed this; her therapist has told her so.

She's allowed comfort, she's allowed to seek it and to accept it. And he'd been dead. Dead and bloody and surrounded by all that twisted metal and broken glass. Regina kisses him harder, harder, one arm wrapping up around his neck to anchor him to her. She wants heat and passion, not sweetness and comfort. She wants to feel him _alive_.

Robin moans softly against her mouth, his hands gripping tighter at her hip, in her hair, and they stumble a few steps until they hit the railing. She gasps as she bumps into it, their lips parting with a soft smack. Regina's blinks her eyes open, and finds Robin looking at her like she's a banquet and he's a man starved.

When he reaches both hands down and scoops her up, she lets out a surprised "Mm!", then laughs softly as he settles her on the porch rail.

She's in that Arsenal hoodie that smells like him and soft cotton sleep shorts, and the rough brick of the porch rail snags a little against the thin material of her shorts, scrapes a little against the back of her thighs. She doesn't mind, parts her legs anyway, lets him step in between just like he had the other night, his hands coasting up her thighs just like they had the other night, too.

He murmurs, "You are so bloody gorgeous," as he looks at her.

"You're just saying that because I got all weepy on you earlier," Regina teases softly, her hands finding his arms, his biceps, his shoulders. She so enjoys the _feel_ of him. The brush of denim against the sensitive insides of her thighs, the warmth of the hand at her spine that urges her in toward his mouth again.

He murmurs, "I'm saying it because it's true," just before their lips touch, and this time, the connection is electric. He's kissing her in earnest now, and she's kissing him back just the same, her ankles hooked around the backs of his thighs, one of his hands on her ass again, slipping beneath the hoodie to palm her through just her shorts.

And it is _just_ her shorts. She's bare beneath them, and feels herself growing wetter, aching for more contact, more friction. But they shouldn't do that, they're not supposed to do that, so she doesn't tighten her legs around him, doesn't scoot closer.

She _does_ indulge in running a hand up beneath the material of his t-shirt, feeling his skin smooth and warm beneath her palm. Her nails scratch gently across his spine and Robin shivers, sending a ripple of satisfaction through her. She wants to make him do that again. She tries and succeeds, a light scrape making him shudder again just before he groans and kisses his way down her neck.

She's not quite sure how, but they go from zero to sixty in short order – one minute he's sucking at a sensitive spot near her jaw, one hand on her ass, the other in her hair, the next she's begged a breathless, "Touch me," and he's drawn the zipper of that hoodie down, cupped her breasts in his palms, and is dragging his teeth across her pulse.

She's naked beneath the hoodie, too, his callused thumbs rubbing twin circles over her nipples before he grasps and tugs at them just the way she likes, and Regina lets out a not-so-quiet, "Oh!" – and then remembers they're outside.

Outside and on her porch, and what is she _doing_?

"We're going to get caught," she gasps, but Robin shakes his head, murmurs, _No_ , and rolls her nipples again.

"Henry's in bed," he reminds, and she groans, and nods and pushes her chest greedily into his palms even as she protests, _The neighbors…_ "Are asleep, babe," he assures, and oh, okay, well, if they're asleep…

She gasps, "Harder," and he pinches both nipples and holds until she's letting out a desperate "Ahhh!" and raking her nails across his lower back.

That ache between her thighs is sharper now, wetter, needier, and she grasps one of his wrists and squeezes, urges, "Touch me," again and guides his hand down lower.

Robin swallows thickly, asks, "You sure?" even as his hand lands on her thigh, fingertips pressing into her skin as he rakes his hand up, up, up. She nods, and he asks, "What about…?"

His thumb sneaks beneath the loose cotton at her crotch, skates across her clit as she gasps, "Doesn't matter… Touch me, _please_..."

And he does, oh, how he does, groaning and murmuring how wet she is, as his thumb circles and circles against her clit, riling her up, drawing gasps and soft moans from her. He kisses her while he does it, wet and a little sloppy, but _good_. Hungry.

Her hands have been fisted in the sides of his shirt, until it occurs to her that he's already got a devious hand stolen away inside her shorts and she's barely touched him. In fact, this whole encounter has been fairly one-sided so far, and that just won't do. So she reaches for his belt, unbuckles it and then works his button and fly, his shorts falling to the porch with a soft thunk. He's hard for her, warm and velvety in her hand, and she strokes him slowly, her grip snug as she relearns the feel of him.

It's been a while, after all.

Robin groans and drops his head to her shoulder, his thumb working her faster.

"Oh, babe, so good…" he murmurs into her skin, and this is good, so good, but she needs more.

He knows, somehow he knows, he must, because that hand is sliding away from her (she cries out; this is not at all what she wanted), before he grasps her hips and tugs her forward. It gives him better access, lets him slide his fingers up into her shorts again, but at an entirely new angle, one where he can slip two fingers into her soaked heat and fuck her steadily with them.

Regina moans and bites her lip (the neighbors can't possibly be asleep this early, she should be quiet), then hisses, "Yesss, like that…"

"Just like that?" he asks, and she nods, and nods, lets out another soft _ah!_ and rubs her thumb over his tip to make him gasp.

"So beautiful," he breathes to her, "Could look at you for the rest of my natural life," and she feels it, feels beautiful.

The angle shifts somehow and Regina gasps, digs her nails into his biceps, tips her head back for a moment, and revels in the feel of him. In being touched, being stroked and pleased and soothed after such a long and miserable day. She needs this, _needs_ it, needs the feel of him against her (kisses him again, because she needs that, too), needs the feel of him inside her. She wants to wrap herself around him and absorb him, take him inside her and—

Oh. _Oh._

She wants to take him inside her. Wants him inside her, needs him inside her, warm and alive and vital, needs to _feel him_.

 _You're human, Regina_ , Archie Hopper's voice comes to her like he's standing right there beside her. _...both consenting adults, there's nothing wrong with that._

She sees him over Robin's shoulder when her eyes crack open, like a hologram, flickering and then gone.

_It's okay to want that and to take it._

So she does.

She strokes down to the base of Robin's cock, then urges him forward. He lets loose a needy little groan and steps closer, reaching between them and tugging her shorts to the side before he lines up and sinks his cock into her.

Regina moans at the feel of him, then drags his mouth to hers. They kiss and they kiss, his arms wrapped around her, his hands groping her ass, his fingers in her hair as he pistons inside her, matching the pace of their suddenly heated making out. Tongues tangle breathlessly, moans and groans and gasps echoing between their lips, and it feels good, so good, she wants more of him, always more of him, wants him closer, presses her brow to his and cries, "Oh, Robin!" and "God, harder!"

And he does as she asks, fucks into her harder, quicker, groans her name and, "Oh, babe, yes, like that…" and "Unh, don't stop," or maybe that's her, maybe…

She squeezes her eyes shut on a particularly satisfying thrust and opens them to the dark.

She's disoriented, panting lightly, on her back, in her bed, alone.

Robin's not here. She'd been… dreaming. And dreaming _well_ , apparently.

Damnit.

She's sweaty, and horny, rolls her head to look at the clock on her nightstand. Three AM.

At least this time it wasn't violence and death that woke her, she tells herself blearily, shifting slightly beneath her covers. The movement makes her acutely aware of what her dream self had been engaged in; she's slick and slippery, aching and full. But so _empty_ , too, and she wants…

Well, she wants Robin, but that's absolutely not happening.

Her dream self may be willing to – oh, God, fuck him on her _porch_ at nine-thirty on a Friday night, as if Granny Lucas wouldn't see every slutty moment of it (No matter what Archie says, _that_ would not be perfectly okay behavior). But her waking self, even fuzzy-brained and half awake as she is, knows better.

But that wetness, it's not going away, and she wasn't exactly _close_ to an orgasm, but she wasn't far either. So she licks her lips and lets her right hand creep down under the covers, slipping it into her pajama shorts, into her panties. She's absolutely soaked, sensitive and swollen, and she inhales sharply as her fingertips brush her hard clit.

Oh, yeah. This won't take long at all.

She rubs a few more slow circles against the little nub, her thighs already quaking from the little shocks of bliss that radiate out, but it's not what she really wants. She wants what she'd had in the dream, wants that feeling of fullness. So she reaches down and slips two fingers into herself just like Robin had. She sinks right in, hot and drenched, but it's not enough, not thick enough, she wants his _cock_ inside her, and two slim fingers just won't do. Regina adds a third, and that's better, that'll satisfy her.

She pumps her fingers just the way he'd been inside her, matches the rhythm they'd set and closes her eyes, and imagines. They're back on that porch (because nobody is awake at three AM, and, hell, it's not real anyway), Robin's hands on her ass, his mouth on hers, his cock inside her in quick, firm thrusts. The heel of her hand rocks against her clit, and Regina moans deeply, feels her thighs shake again, twitching with every harsher burst of pleasure.

She's close now, needs just a little more, imagines his fingers on her nipples, squeezing and kneading like they had in the dream, imagines him sucking and nipping at them, imagines him licking between her thighs, his hair tangled in her fingers, his cock inside her faster, faster, harder, " _Oh!_ Mmm! Robin!"

She comes hard, her belly clenching, her body curving in on itself just a little as she sweats and pants and rocks her hand in a stilted, staccato rhythm as she tries to draw the release out for herself.

And then she relaxes with a sigh, boneless on top of her sheets, her fingers lax but still tucked inside of her.

"Fuck..." she breathes into the dark.

That was… very good for an interrupted sex dream and a groggy hand job, that's for sure.

And maybe she should be embarrassed about it, and maybe tomorrow she will be, but right now… Right now, the rush of orgasm has settled into a low buzz in her limbs, sleepy and sated, and she thinks if she closed her eyes, she'd probably be able to sink back under.

She needs the sleep, desperately, if she's going to recover from today and make it through tomorrow. So she does just that: slips her fingers out, and wipes them clumsily on her belly, then rolls onto her side with an indulgent stretch and burrows into her pillow.

Her limbs are still tingling pleasantly when she falls asleep.


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for emotional abuse, disordered eating, and anxiety. Welcome to Sunday brunch with Mother.

They're crouched in her garden, quietly pulling up little green shoots again, when Regina steps out onto the porch with her coffee cup in hand. It's only just barely nine, but as she walks up to smile over the rail at the two of them, Robin can see she's already dressed for the day.

It's not her usual weekend attire – a dark blue sleeveless dress that fits her like a dream, and a simple string of pearls around her neck. Her hair is blown out straight, and she's already done her makeup, speaking from soft rose lips as she asks playfully, "Are you two ripping up my garden?"

"Uh huh!" Roland tells her happily. And then he adds sagely, "But only the ugly things."

Regina laughs, and it warms Robin right through the middle. He's glad to see her smiling; yesterday had clearly not been a very good day for her.

"Good," she nods at Roland, trying to match his seriousness and failing.

She glances at Robin, and then away quickly, taking a deep breath and wetting her lips.

Interesting.

He wonders what exactly had prompted that reaction, thinks maybe she's still self-conscious about calling him yesterday. She shouldn't be. There's no shame in reaching out for help, and she has to know he'd never judge her for it.

He wants to say so, but calling attention to it would probably just make her feel even worse, so instead he smiles at her and says, "You look nice today."

Regina makes a face and tells him, "Brunch with my parents."

"Oh, you're having quite the weekend, aren't you?" he teases sympathetically. That might explain her state yesterday. He can only imagine the level of therapy one might need to prepare themselves for brunch with Cora Mills.

"Yeah," she scoffs, and then she adjusts her hold on her mug and tells him, "I have your sweatshirt, if you want it back."

"I'll get it the next time I'm here," he tells her casually; he has no intention of really doing so. It's a favorite, but the soft little smile she gives him is worth more than a bit of cloth. And besides, if it's brought her any measure of comfort, he wants to make sure it's still there when she gets home from brunch.

She nods, and tells him, "Thank you. It was like… a remote hug, when one was sorely needed."

"Good. That was the intention."

"Regina, can I have juice?" Roland pipes up, clearly bored with all this grown-up talk. Robin really does need to have a word with him about assuming he's welcome to anything in anyone's kitchen, but he has a feeling Regina would insist that he is exactly that when it comes to her kitchen in particular, so he lets it slide.

She doesn't seem the least bit bothered by the request. Only smirks, and asks him, "Apple or grapefruit?"

"Apple," Roland says firmly, face twisted into a scowl. "Grapefruit is icky."

"Well, we can't have icky so early in the day, can we?" she teases.

Roland shakes his head and says, "Nope."

"Then apple it is," Regina confirms, before she looks at Robin, and asks, "Coffee?"

"If it's not any trouble," he nods.

She assures him it's not, and then looks at Roland again, with a firm, "Only the ugly things."

Roland's head bobs resolutely and he squints back into the dirt.

Robin watches her until she disappears into the house again, and then turns his attention back to Roland, who has started to frown resolutely at a patch of tall, yellow, daisy-looking flowers toward the back of the garden.

"Daddy, can I have one of those yellow ones?" he asks, to Robin's utter lack of surprise.

"These are Regina's flowers, son," Robin reminds him. "You'll have to ask her when she comes back out with your juice."

"But…" Roland scowls. "I _need_ it."

He's not sure what could cause such a mighty need for a daisy, but he repeats himself, "You can ask Regina in a minute. Until then, why don't you grab that little scraggly bit there?"

He points to a weed trying to poke its way up between two shoots, and Roland heaves a sigh and bends to pull it.

Regina reemerges a minute later, a cup in one hand, a mug in the other, and a wincing smile on her face.

"I just realized I never asked if you wanted it iced," she says apologetically, but Robin waves her off.

"Hot's fine," he assures. It's a warm morning, but not a blazing one. He can do with a bit of hot coffee.

"Regina, can I have one of those yellow ones?" Roland butts in, pointing at the flowers in question with his face ever hopeful, dimples popping out in his cheeks.

Robin watches Regina fight not to laugh at him, her eyes all warm amusement.

"What's the magic word?" she urges, and Robin kicks himself for not being the one to insist on manners first.

"Please, can I have one of these yellow ones?" Roland tries again.

"Yes," Regina nods. "You may have one of my Lemon Queens. But let your Daddy pick it for you, okay?"

Roland nods, turning to Robin with a "Daddy, please?" and one of those smiles that gets him any damn thing he wants.

"Of course, my boy," Robin assures, pushing to his feet and stepping carefully into the garden until he can reach the desired flowers.

"Make sure it's the prettiest one!" Roland insists, just as Robin reaches for one that's a bit nibbled on one petal – he hadn't wanted to pluck her most pristine bloom for his preschooler.

"How pretty?" Robin asks, peering over his shoulder at his son.

"The very prettiest," Roland instructs. "And I'll know, Daddy; I'll check."

He will, Robin knows that. And there are dozens of these Lemon Queens, as she'd called them, so Robin figures it won't hurt her to part with one of the better ones. He veers a bit left, and picks a flawless one at Roland's request, then gingerly retreats and hands it to him.

Regina watches the whole thing from the porch, their drinks resting on the rail in front of her.

Roland takes the yellow flower carefully, saying, "Thanks, Daddy."

And then he toddles off toward the porch, climbing the steps carefully and disappearing from Robin's view. But he watches Regina's face melt, her grin spreading as she drops her gaze to his son, her hand reaching down as Roland's little voice floats to Robin: "Thank you for the juice."

Well, no wonder.

And to think, he'd almost picked them a dud.

Regina lifts that little yellow flower, dragging a fingertip over one thankfully pristine petal, and offering Roland a thoroughly charmed, "You are very welcome, Roland. Thank you for your weeding. And this pretty flower."

 _Good man_ , he thinks.

Robin grins, watching as Regina hands Roland his juice and urges him to be careful on the steps. And then she turns her gaze to Robin with a slightly suspicious tilt of her head, and he realizes she thinks there's a chance he put Roland up to this.

He shakes his head as earnestly as possible, says, "All him."

And in case he wasn't convincing enough, Roland rejoins him with a slightly miffed, "See, I _told_ you I needed it," that makes Regina tip her head back and laugh.

Robin drinks in the sight of her, unbothered for a moment and _happy_ (it's a rare sight these days, and he feels twin stabs of guilt at himself and loathing for those wankers she works with). When she looks back down at them, biting her grin and shaking her head in amusement, he offers her a look that clearly means, _I told you so_.

Regina chuckles warmly, and says, "Let me know if you boys need anything else. But no dirt in the house."

"I promise," he tells her, and then she's gone again, taking her little yellow bloom with her.

**.::.**

It had been exactly what she needed, that little gesture from Roland. Something sweet to get her day off to a good start. She'd slept well after her dream (no surprise there), but she's not looking forward to this day.

To Mother.

To Mother after having been blown off, and blown off after acquiescing to Regina's desired plans, no less.

There is no rebellion today. She's done her hair the way Mother likes it, she's chosen makeup that is appropriate for a daytime appearance at the Club, and she'd even changed her mind on the dress she had planned on wearing, worried that Mother would tell her the muted grey washes her out, or that the folded neckline is ugly. (She likes it, but would Mother?)

Instead, she'd gone with a sleek royal blue sheath dress – simple, elegant, difficult to pick apart. And it fits her well right now, doesn't pinch or bulge anywhere in a way that Mother can zero in on. She's paired it with the pearls Daddy gave her for her birthday several years ago, and has nude pumps set aside for when they leave, all of her essentials slipped into a matching leather clutch.

Perfectly presentable.

It makes her feel just a little downtrodden, but today is for Henry. She doesn't want to have a standoff with her mother over something so easily altered, so she's fallen in line like a good little Stepford daughter. She'll play the part, dress the part, smile and be polite and bite her tongue.

And then tonight, she'll do something to treat herself. She's not sure what, but she'll figure it out later.

No, she thinks. She'll figure it out now.

Dr. Hopper would suggest that she know before she leaves for the day, that she have a plan. Self-care, and triggers, and all that.

So tonight, she will… take Henry for ice cream. A treat for both of them. She'll take him to that ice cream shop that he likes, and she'll get the sinfully good strawberry ice cream that she likes, and she will add chocolate chips to it, and she will _not_ feel guilty about eating it. It will be her _reward_ , her treat for herself. Guilt-free ice cream, no matter what stupid and hurtful things Mother says to her.

She'll have her ice cream, and then she'll come home and take a long, hot bath. She'll light some candles, and pour in some scented oil, and she'll put on one of the Lord of the Rings movies for Henry to give herself plenty of time to soak. And then she'll just stay there until she turns into an overheated prune.

**.::.**

Regina valets her car when they arrive at the Club, and meets her parents at the concierge's desk as planned. Much to Mother's disappointment, Regina herself does not keep a membership here, so her parents are always stuck waiting to check them in as guests. It's a point of contention, one she'll surely hear about again today, but quite frankly she doesn't have the money to burn on a membership to a place she'd never drag Henry to on her own. She doesn't golf, there's a community center not too far from their place that has a pool, she already has a spa she likes, and there are plenty of places to eat in Baltimore that aren't full of prissy, pretentious country club people.

She's not forking over the membership fee just to save her mother the embarrassment of having to sign her in.

Of course, embarrassment never does any favors to Cora Mills's temperament, so Regina always tries to arrive a few minutes early, to reduce the risk of her parents having to wait for them and compound the terrible embarrassment of a daughter who refuses to join the Club. Today she is right on time, a little bit of a traffic snarl eating up the ten extra minutes she'd allotted herself. But at least she's not late.

The first thing Mother says when she sees her is "Hello, dear." The second is, "That's an awfully dark color for daytime, isn't it?"

Regina's smile tightens and she breathes in, out. So much for any vain hope that this would be a _good_ day.

"I think it's a beautiful color on her," Daddy compliments immediately, leaning in and giving Regina a kiss on the cheek before greeting Henry with a quick hug.

"Thank you, Daddy," Regina murmurs, as always, and then she combs her fingers through her hair and tells her mother, "I think the blue is flattering. And it goes well with Daddy's pearls."

Cora's mouth pinches a little, but her brows rise and fall in concession. "I suppose it does. And at least it's slimming."

Regina grits her teeth, then watches as Cora turns her attention to Henry. Regina feels her belly twist and swoop, hot anxiety sloshing through it so suddenly that she has to press a hand there to steady herself. If Cora says _anything_ , Regina is going to take her son, turn around, and march right the hell out of here, birthday be damned.

But Mother just smiles, and tells him, "You're smartly dressed today, dear, aren't you?"

Relief fizzles through her, cools that heat as her lips curl in satisfaction. She'd pressed his khakis just this morning, and picked up a new, light blue checked button-down shirt for him earlier this week, finishing it off with a bow tie nearly the same royal blue as her dress. She'd also wet-combed that stubborn piece of hair he'd woken up with until it had finally lain flat, Henry huffing and scowling his annoyance all the while.

But he does look quite smartly dressed, in his new shoes, and his Club-appropriate attire, and she's pleased to have her mother's approval on _that_ at least. She may never pass muster, but at least she can dress her son in a way that does.

Daddy tells Henry that eleven looks quite sophisticated on him as they finish up their check-in, and then they're off to the cafe.

Regina slides an arm around Henry's shoulder as they walk, giving him a little squeeze. When he leans over to her and whispers, "I think you look really pretty, Mom," she manages her first genuine smile since she'd handed over the keys to her Mercedes.

**.::.**

They haven't even reached their table yet when Regina gets the next passive aggressive swipe from her mother – and all without Cora even having to open her mouth.

No, no, it's the waitress, a bubbly young girl named Anna who has been waiting tables here for the past several years, and who always has a smile and a little _too_ much conversation to share. But she's sweet, and she means well, and Regina can't really _blame_ her for the way she grins and says, "I'm glad to see you're feeling better, Ms. Mills," as they're all taking their seats.

Unaware that she had ever been feeling unwell in the first place, Regina still responds with an automatic, "Oh… Thank you. You're too kind."

As soon as the redhead has ferried herself away, Regina looks to her mother, one brow rising in question. "Feeling better?"

Cora huffs softly, but her eyes don't stray from the menu she's begun to peruse as she answers, "Well, we had to come up with _some_ reason for last week's reservation for four becoming a reservation for two, and I certainly wasn't going to admit that my own daughter stood me up to go galavanting off on some—"

Out of the corner of her eye, she catches Henry's shoulders beginning to slump, and it kicks something up inside of her. A panicked sort of need to protect him, to shut her mother up at all costs before she keeps talking in a way that will bruise.

"Mother, if the rest of that sentence is going to make my son feel badly about wanting something special for his birthday, I want you to know that _this_ reservation for four will rapidly become a reservation for two." Regina tries to hide her nervous swallow, grateful that Cora is only just now glancing up to meet Regina's own steady gaze.

"Excuse me?" her mother questions.

"I will leave," Regina tells her plainly, although she's careful to keep her voice down. She can barely hear it over the sound of her own pulse nervously knocking in her throat, but damnit, she will _not_ let Mother hurt Henry's feelings along with her own. "We will leave."

"No, you won't," Cora scoffs, as if the very idea is absurd. And it is, but she doesn't care. She's wrestled up a bit of courage and spine from somewhere, and she's running with it.

So much for not rebelling.

"Oh yes, Mother, I will." She'll probably pay for this later, but she's started now, and she'd damn well better finish, so she continues very calmly, and very politely, "I understand that you went out of your way to arrange the nice afternoon I requested for Henry's birthday. And I understand that we cancelled on short notice, and it upset you. And I fully expect you to make your displeasure known, but I want to be very clear with you: I have a line that is not to be crossed. And it is sitting directly to my left. You _will not_ say a word today that makes Henry feel anything other than celebrated, or we will leave. Do you understand me?"

Do not break eye contact. Do _not_ break eye contact.

It's a mantra she tells herself as she watches Cora's eyes narrow, watches her mother size her up. Regina wonders if she's trying to choose the most vulnerable place to land a verbal arrow, but all she says is a coolly disapproving, "You're making a scene."

"No, I'm not; nobody outside of this table can hear a word I'm saying." She's made damn sure of that. "I'm not making a scene, I'm setting a boundary."

Cora's head tilts just slightly, a flicker of judgmental laughter preceding her almost snide, "It sounds like someone has been seeing that ridiculous therapist again."

Regina bristles, sits a little taller, and admits, "Not that it's any of your business, but I have recently had an appointment, yes."

Regina neglects to mention that it was two appointments plus a phone call, and that she's due back on Wednesday. Mother doesn't need any more ammunition for her cannon of ridicule than she already has.

"But that is neither here nor there," Regina continues. "I'm not saying this because of therapy. I'm saying this because I love my son. It was his birthday, and he wanted to go to the Smithsonian, so I gave him what he wanted."

"You spoiled him."

"No, Mother," Regina shakes her head, beginning to grow dangerously comfortable in her own strength once it becomes apparent she's not going to be immediately slapped down for it. "I had _fun_ with him – we had a little spontaneous adventure. I gave him a good memory, and a great birthday."

She elects not to voice her silent continuation of that particular thought: _Something you never once afforded me, you spiteful, miserable bitch._

"So if you want to take your anger out on me, you go right ahead," Regina invites, a stab of regret slicing through her middle as soon as she hears the words come out of her mouth. But she swallows and soldiers on, finishing with, "But never on my son. You won't taint his good day with your disappointment, and if you try to, I won't let him stay here. This is his day, not yours, or mine, or Daddy's. And it's going to be a good day."

Cora tries to play it off as though she isn't ruffled by Regina's words, but Regina knows better. No matter how easily she laughs it off, or how dismissively she chuckles, "I don't know why you thought anyone at this table expected it to be anything else, dear. Honestly, you can be so dramatic."

Regina fights not to roll her eyes – a fight she loses, and ends up disguising the motion by turning her head in her father's direction, as if she'd been intending to look there all the while. She's been focusing so hard on Mother that she hadn't spared a glance for either Henry, but she finds her father's eyes bright and pleased with her, one corner of his mouth ticking up in a blunted smile.

He's proud of her, she thinks with a pleasant flush.

"We'll all have a nice lunch," he reassures, his hand gently patting the one of hers nearest to him. It's only then that she realizes she's been white-knuckling her fork, and she uncurls her grasp with what she hopes is an invisible flush of embarrassment up her neck. "I'm leaning toward the shrimp and grits myself."

It's an attempt at a segue, and Mother seems to be going with the let-me-clutch-my-pearls-and-insist-I-would-never routine right now, so Regina lets it all drop, telling him, "That sounds delicious, Daddy. They're good here."

And then she turns to her son, asking Henry, "What are you thinking, sweetheart?"

She leans toward him as she asks, peers over onto his menu, and Henry moves in, too, until their shoulders touch.

"They have stuffed French toast," he says, smiling up at her hopefully.

Regina skims the menu for it, reads the description, and says, "Mmm, with berry compote. I think that sounds wonderful for birthday brunch." She faux-whispers, "Maybe Anna will even stick a candle in it," and earns herself a grin.

When he asks, "What about you, Mom?" she has to force herself to actually give the menu a good look, skimming appetizers, and brunch offerings, before she tells herself to stop pretending and go straight to the salads.

Mother had started off in a mood, and Regina had just made it even worse. She's not going to invite even more criticism by ordering something as decadent as eggs Benedict (not unless she wants a repeat of the last time), or that stuffed French toast.

No, no, she'll get a salad. Something clean and lean and impenetrable.

They've moved the heirloom caprese she likes to the brunch menu, she notices with a pang of longing. Maybe Daddy will split it with her…

Her scrutiny of the menu is interrupted by Anna returning to take their drink orders, and Regina tells herself that one mimosa will not impair her driving, but will _vastly_ improve her meal. So she indulges, realizing only as the request is out of her mouth that Mother hasn't ordered a drink—which means she will be the only one drinking.

She has a moment to wonder whether Mother will make a stink about it (or a passive aggressive dig, more accurately), and then she hears two precious words come from her father beside her: "Bloody Mary."

Thank God.

She breathes a little more easily for the thirty seconds before Cora declares that, on second thought, she thinks they're all ready to order their meals now, too.

Regina isn't ready yet, hasn't decided yet, but Anna always starts with Mother. Mother knows that, so surely _she_ has decided on her meal. And Henry is ready, too, which means Regina needs to make a choice _now_.

Cora orders a salad – not a huge surprise, but Regina has to fight a frown. She'd been hoping to add a cup of their crab soup to her own salad, but a meal with Mother is a chess game, and she knows that if she wants to diminish the opportunities for her mother to dig her claws in, she has to undercut her on calories, and overshoot her on health. So anything cream-based is out, and the tuna nicoise is off the table, too, what with the potatoes. She should have eaten something this morning, so her stomach wasn't so empty...

Henry asks for his stuffed French toast, with Regina adding, "And a fruit plate for him, as well." It'll counteract the sugar and cream cheese in the French toast, and give Regina a little more food to steal.

For her own meal, she orders a baby kale salad, resigning herself to not quite being full and having to sip slowly at her single mimosa lest the champagne go to her head.

Daddy orders the shrimp and grits as planned. Regina feels a little burn of jealousy, and then she reminds herself she has ice cream to look forward to later. A double-scoop, maybe, and definitely with chocolate chips.

She has earned it.

**.::.**

Things get a little easier once the meal is ordered – even easier once the drinks arrive. Daddy turns the conversation to Henry, asking him about their drive to Washington last week, and all the things they saw and did. Regina takes the opportunity to sit quietly, smile at her son, sip her mimosa, and take in the ambience.

She has mixed feelings about this restaurant.

It's her mother's favorite of the two on the Club grounds, so she's been here more times than she can count. On the one hand, it's sunny, and pleasant, and the food is good. The service is never lacking, and when she comes here with just her father, she always has a relaxing, pleasant time. With Mother, it's about fifty-fifty as to whether they'll have a pleasant-ish lunch or one that leaves her feeling hollowed out and ashamed.

And that's the other hand, really: too many memories. On good days, she sits in these lovely white chairs and remembers sunny summer afternoons, or cozy winter dinners. They'd brought Daniel here when he came home to meet her parents, and he'd leaned over to her every five minutes and whispered some sort of mockery or observation about some of the snootier diners that evening. She'd had to fight not to snicker, had pressed her knee against his under the table, and taken another bite of her risotto. She can still taste it – lobster risotto, and white wine. They'd even had dessert, before Mother managed to make a snide comment about the weight Regina had put on since she left home, and did she really _need_ that slice of pecan pie?

Daniel hadn't taken too kindly to that—and had had no problem saying so—and that had pretty much been the end of an amicable relationship between her mother and her future fiancé.

But still, the dinner itself was a good memory.

Other dinners, other lunches… not so much. Her parents have been members for as long as she can remember, which means that Regina practically grew up here at the Club. And growing up was… not easy. She's had as many dinner-table battles here as pleasant lunches. Has sat around this exact table before and practically minced a chicken breast rather than eating it, hoping if the pieces were small enough, Daddy wouldn't notice how little of it she ate. She can recite the lowest calorie items on the menu from every summer of the late nineties. Can vividly remember which of the waitstaff looked at her like they _knew_ , or looked at Cora with that pinched sort of disapproval.

So on bad days, she hates this place. Hates the memories. On bad days, she sits here and feels very young.

Today is… not the best day, but not her worst. She's playing Mother's game, and that's not ideal, but she still has her mind on that ice cream later. She still believes she deserves it.

Dr. Hopper would be proud.

Today, she can sit here and sip her mimosa and not feel guilty about it (it's only one, after all).

When the food arrives, she finds the baby kale salad is not a large meal by any stretch of the imagination, but it'll be enough to hold her over. She won't be _starving_ , at least. And it tastes good – kale and cucumbers, spiced apples, and a tempting hunk of stilton cheese that she immediately shifts to the side. She'll have a little bit of it, but probably not all.

For a minute, she wishes she was just here with Daddy and Henry and could eat all the cheese she damn well pleases. Hell, if she was here with the two of them, she wouldn't even bother with the salad. She'd get something else – that caprese salad as an appetizer, and maybe the nicoise after all.

Regina doesn't realize quite how much she's zoned out of the meal happening around her until she hears Cora say her name.

"So, Regina, have you met anyone special since that man who didn't work out?"

Damnit. She should have seen this coming – an outing to the country Club wouldn't be complete without Cora attempting to point out at least five eligible men Regina could be pursuing. At least this time she's asked without that razor edge to her voice that usually means she's baiting. She's probably genuinely trying to be civil, finally.

But still, it grates at Regina, and doubly so when Henry sits a little straighter and asks, "Who? Robin?"

"Ah, so he has a name," Cora says, interested. Regina reminds herself that her mother had no way of knowing how Henry would react to this particular line of questioning, so this isn't as intentionally cornering as it feels. Even so, she's not letting herself be led down this path.

"Henry, now isn't the time," Regina chides gently, hoping she can convey with a look just how badly she does _not_ want to talk about this with his grandmother. She turns her attention back to Cora and reminds, "I mentioned last time we saw each other that I had been out since then. But no, nobody special."

Cora looks back and forth between Regina and Henry, takes a bite of her salad and chews methodically.

Regina attempts to do the same, but there's a look in her mother's eye, calculating, thoughtful. There's something more here, and Mother's keen nose for conflict and gossip has sniffed it out, leaving Regina stuck grinding cucumber between her teeth and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It takes her a minute, but Cora finally muses, "I do find it curious that Henry has met this Robin, even though you claim he wasn't worth talking about."

And there it is.

"He's a friend of a friend; they had already met," Regina dismisses with a sigh. "And I don't want to talk about this. It's old news."

"Are you sure?" Cora's gaze slides to Henry, who has suddenly taken a keen interest in his orange juice.

"Yes," Regina answers, her tongue wetting her lips and tasting a phantom echo of Thursday night's whiskey under the sweetness of citrus. "It's past, and it's private."

"Sweetheart, we're your parents," Cora reasons.

"Yes, Mother, I know that," Regina sighs heavily, "And if there's ever something worth telling, I will tell you. But for now, it's just me and Henry."

"Well, that's a shame. You shouldn't be alone, dear."

"I'm not."

"Your mother's right," her father says from his place next to her, and Regina has to fight to keep the betrayal off her face. It's rare that they gang up on her. "You deserve someone special in your life—"

"I had someone special, Daddy, and he died," Regina tells her father, ignoring the way her mother scoffs from the other side of the table. "And then I had Graham, and it was… good, but not the same. I spent two years on something that didn't work, and I wouldn't call it a waste, but… I'm too old to pass my time in relationships that don't work. So I am _trying_ , when the opportunity presents itself. But I'm not going to invest time and energy into things that don't feel right."

"You're too old to be picky," Cora tells her tartly from across the table.

Regina reaches for her mimosa again and takes a deep swallow, hoping the juice and bubbles will wash away the sudden surge of bitterness she feels. She's too old to invest time in things that feel wrong, and she's sitting across the table from the reason she can't have the one thing in years that's felt _right._

It doesn't really work; she can still feel the venomous slither of resentment through her veins as she mutters, "I'm only thirty-five, Mother. It's not that old."

"It is if you're going to have more children," Cora says, and Regina chuckles, shaking her head.

"Well, then it's a good thing that's not anywhere in my future plans," she tells her, before turning to smile at Henry. "I have a child, and he's wonderful. I don't need anything more."

Henry smiles back at her around a closed mouthful of French toast, and Regina feels a surge of motherly affection that nearly takes her breath away. He is perfect – even when he's not. He's the one thing in her life that makes every moment of struggle and doubt and anger and anxiety worth it. A happy smile with a mouth full of junk food shouldn't make her so proud, but it does – because it means that whatever her memories of this restaurant and these tables are, his will be far better. Whatever Mother may have done to her, _she_ has done better.

She realizes then that today was a mistake– she didn't want this because it was special for Henry, she wanted it because this is how she'd always been taught "special occasions" were done. Tense meals at the Club, and manipulations, and tiptoeing around carbs and cheese and sugar and fat so as not to arouse the ire of the woman across the table from her.

This was her lockstepping into Mother's expectations of her without even realizing she was doing it, and screw that, and screw her. Regina has everything she needs sitting just to her left, and her right, and Good Birthdays do not have to be like this.

So yes, this was a mistake, but now they're here, so she'll make the best of it until the check comes, and then she'll take her son and make a better day of it. In the meantime, she breaks off a little hunk of that stilton and piles it onto an apple slice for her next bite.

"That's all well and good for _you_ ," Cora tells her, still stuck on Regina's love life, it seems. "But whoever you end up with might want a child of his own."

"Mother, if I agree to marry again, it's going to be to a man who loves me for what I already have, and loves Henry as his own. I'd never say yes to anything else." Cora scowls as Regina adds, "And I will choose him for myself. So you can stop tallying the list of men in this room you'd like to introduce me to before we leave."

"I was doing no such thing," Cora retorts, reaching for her water and taking a dainty sip, before she adds, "But your son needs a father figure; I'm sure you know that."

"No, I don't," Henry speaks up next to her. "I have my mom."

"Yes, well, your mother—" Cora begins, but Regina has no real desire to hear how that sentence is going to end, so she interrupts it.

"I don't have to be dating a man for my son to look up to him," she tells her with absolute confidence. If nothing else, this summer has proven that. "In fact, it's probably better if I'm not. Henry had Graham in his life for two years, and then he was gone. I want Henry to know good men, and he does, but I don't want them to be men who might up and disappear on him because things don't work out between us. A man doesn't have to be dating me to be important to Henry."

"Well, I suppose for Henry's sake, we should be glad of that."

Regina rolls her eyes, hard – can't help herself after that last little remark.

"Cora, why don't we let this go?" Daddy suggests, finally bothering to rejoin the conversation. At least he's defending her this time, and not making it worse. "Regina clearly doesn't want to talk about it anymore, and I think it's safe to say she knows how to give Henry what he needs."

"Thank you, Daddy," she says pointedly, before turning her attention back to her mother, and telling her, "We're doing just fine on our own."

Mother makes this sound, a miffed little, "Hmm," but she doesn't argue the point any further.

**.::.**

Cora's mood doesn't much improve after that – something Regina takes a darkly smug little thrill in. She's pushed back not once, but twice, today and _won_. But personal satisfaction or not, it does put a little bit of a damper on the mood. Their conversation hits awkward, stilted pauses, bumping up against the roadblock of her mother's sour temperament; Regina is glad when Anna pops by their table and Mother requests the check.

"Do you want any of this wrapped up?" she asks them.

Daddy hasn't quite cleared his plate, and Henry had admitted defeat with two bites of French toast left before asking if he could go to the bathroom. They're just sitting there, going to waste, and she's by no means full...

Fuck it, she's going to eat them. It's only two bites.

Regina's stomach swoops nervously as she lifts her fork and spears up the last of the French toast, while her father tells Anna he'll take the rest of his shrimp to go.

She's about an inch from popping her forkful into her mouth when Mother says coolly, "Regina, do you really think you need French toast?"

Everything freezes.

At least, it feels like everything freezes – Regina with her mouth open and French toast poised for eating, Mother's cool stare, Anna with Daddy's plate in her hand at the side of their table.

Regina feels mortification pour over her, drizzling down her spine, coating her heart until it pumps hard, harder, harder. Mother is _not_ doing this right now. Not in front of the waitress.

Anna, bless her heart, tries to make it better with a nervously chuckled, "Oh, everyone needs that French toast. It's _amazing_."

"Be that as it may," Cora clips, "Regina has to work hard to keep her figure. Any little bit of sweets just sticks right to her, ever since she was little."

"Cora, that's enough," her father hisses.

Regina feels her embarrassment burn hotter, her stomach twisting sourly. She's suddenly not at all hungry, but she is stuck. Still frozen, and feeling more foolish by the minute. If she puts down the fork, Anna will know that she's let her mother push her into it, will know that she _believes_ what Mother said. If she eats the French toast, she'll have to swallow food down right now, when she's feeling like this, and she'll have to deal with her mother afterward.

So which is worse: absolute spineless humiliation, or Mother's sharp tongue?

Her palms sweat, her stomach twists.

And then she flicks her gaze to Anna and says, "It sure looks amazing," and shoves the bite into her mouth.

She has been living with her Mother her whole life; she's not going to let this near-stranger think less of her just to spare herself now.

Anna smiles at her and says, "I think you made the right choice," before she flounces off with the plate.

"Idiot girl," Cora mutters as soon as she's gone, and Regina honestly thinks she means _her_ until she tells Daddy, "I'll be handling the bill today; she doesn't deserve the sort of tip you usually give her."

Well, that's just great. Now she's cost that perfectly nice girl a proper tip.

Regina makes a mental note to slip her something extra if she can, staring at the empty glass in front of her in an attempt to avoid her mother's gaze as she chews her French toast as daintily as one can with chipmunk cheeks full of sweetened cream cheese and berries. It's a too-big mouthful, sinfully sweet, almost cloying with her stomach so unsteady.

Avoiding Mother's gaze doesn't do anything to avoid her words, though.

"And as for you, Regina," Cora begins (Regina glances up automatically, then curses herself for it because now she can't look away). "You are an embarrassment. Stuffing your face like an overgrown child who's never seen food on a plate before – something we all know is clearly not true." She adds that last bit with a rake of her gaze over what she can see of Regina's body, and Regina is suddenly acutely aware of the downfall of shoving forbidden food into her mouth: she can't fight back until she swallows. Cora takes full advantage of her forced silence and Henry's absence to get another shot in: "The last thing you need is to indulge, as if you deserve dessert after your petulant show of immaturity today."

"Cora—" her father attempts to break in, but Mother's having none of it.

"Oh, shut up," she hisses, and Regina swallows half of her mouthful. "I don't know what your problem is, young lady, but between the silent treatment, and cancelling last week's plans, and the rudeness today, I am appalled to know that I have raised such an ungrateful brat."

Regina swallows the rest of her French toast and opens her mouth to sling something, anything, back at her Mother – anything to counter the indignant flush of mortification in her cheeks.

But then she sees Henry, making his way back from the bathroom, and goddamnit, it's his day, and she won't do this. She couldn't do anything about the waitress, but she will not have a blow-up with Mother in the middle of the country club in front of her son.

So all she says is, "Enough. Not in front of Henry."

Mother opens her mouth to speak, too, eyes hot and narrowed, but Daddy cuts her off with a warning, "Cora," and a muttered, "People are staring."

It's not people, it's person – one wide-eyed woman at a table two feet away (unlike Regina, Mother does not have the good sense to keep her voice low enough that the people at the table next to them cannot hear every harsh word she's said). But it's enough for Mother to remember that publicly berating her adult daughter for eating two bites of goddamn French toast probably doesn't make the _best_ impression, and, well, appearances.

So she seethes silently, and Regina does the same. She should have ordered another damn drink. She can drive just fine on two mimosas.

Henry plunks back into his seat a moment later, oblivious to the tension at the table, but Regina's hands are still shaking slightly, her heart still hammering. She needs a minute to breathe, or scream, or count to twenty.

"I'm going to the restroom," she says, grabbing her purse and rising without another word, and praying Mother doesn't follow.

When she hits the hallway, she nearly runs smack into Anna, both of them stopping short, the motion making a bit of mimosa slosh out of the flute the younger woman is holding.

"Oops!" she exclaims with a little grimace. "I didn't get any on you, did I?"

Regina glances down, smooths a hand over her belly and offers a flustered, "No, no, I'm fine. It's fine."

"Good," Anna smiles, but there's something behind it. Sympathy, or pity, maybe? Either way, Regina's embarrassment just grows more acute. And then Anna holds the mimosa a little higher and tells Regina, "This is for you, actually. On the house."

Right. Definitely pity.

Regina takes the drink anyway, and gulps, muttering, "Thank you," and "I'm sorry about that."

"Why are _you_ sorry?" Anna asks, baffled. "You didn't do anything; your mother was…"

She trails off then, glancing around. The hallway is empty for the moment, but they both know it wouldn't do Anna any favors to be overhead trashing a member.

"Yes, she was," Regina murmurs, and then she decides, screw it, and tips the flute back even further, chugging down the rest of the mimosa while she's out of sight and can.

"I don't know why she said what she said, but I just want you to know that I have always really admired you." Regina pauses mid-glug, and glances over at Anna. "You're so pretty, and sophisticated, and Henry's such a great kid. Please don't get me fired for saying this, but I really admire the way you put up with your mom's crap. I think you outclass her by a mile. So, free mimosa!"

It's pathetic, soaking up reassurance from a waitress who barely knows her, but Regina drinks in the compliment all the same.

She takes the last swallow of her mimosa, and then hands the flute back, offering Anna a genuinely appreciative, "Thank you. That's… very kind of you."

She reaches into her purse, then, pulling out her wallet and fishing out several bills. She holds them out to Anna, saying, "Here. For you."

"Oh, no, no, I said the mimosa was on the house," Anna protests, eyes gone wide. "And besides, that's a _lot_ for one mimosa."

Regina smiles a little, shaking her head and saying, "It's your tip. Mother's paying the bill now, and you took my side, so you probably won't get much of one from her."

Anna says, "Oh," and gingerly takes the bills, folding them and shoving them into her pocket. "Thank you."

"It's the least I can do, considering I'm the one who cost you my _father's_ tip."

"He's a very nice man," Anna compliments (Regina is not surprised – Daddy's generous hand on the tip line endears him to many a service person). "I don't know how they ended up together."

Regina's brows lift slightly, and Anna's eyes pop impossibly wider, one hand rising to cover her mouth as if she could shove the words back in.

She's no doubt expecting to get roasted for that little comment, but Regina just smirks, and promises, "I won't get you fired for insulting my mother, but if she heard that, _she_ definitely would. So be careful, alright?"

Anna nods, tossing a nervous glance past Regina toward the dining room as she says, "Got it." There's an awkward moment where neither of them really knows how to move forward from here, and then Anna says, "Anyway, I just wanted to give you the drink, and tell you that you've always looked amazing to me, and maybe it takes a lot of work, I don't know, but…" She smiles a little awkwardly and then finishes, "You look great. You can, uh… go to the bathroom now."

Regina laughs a little, and nods, says, "Thank you, again," before slipping past her toward the ladies room.

She hadn't actually _needed_ to use the toilet, but she does anyway, and then she stares at herself in the mirror while she washes her hands.

Classy and sophisticated, huh?

It had certainly been what she was going for, but as she lathers and studies herself, she only sees the flaws. Her mascara is a little clumpy on her left eye, and there's a tiny blemish on her right cheek that she'd covered with makeup but knows is there regardless. And she swears she's gotten a new wrinkle around her eyes; she needs to invest in a new eye cream, maybe, or one of the anti-aging facials at the spa. Something.

She dries her hands, steps back from the mirror, taking advantage of the empty bathroom to turn sideways and stand a little straighter, studying her profile. One hand smoothes over her belly, the muscles clenching slightly under her touch, firming up and tucking in.

She looks fine. Good, even. Thin.

And then she realizes what she's doing, really _realizes_ , and drops her hand. She lets her belly go soft and mutters, "Stupid," as she turns for the bathroom door.

**.::.**

By the time she returns to the table, Regina's knees feel a little bit warm.

Her head isn't swimming by any means, but she can already feel that second hit of champagne effervescing in her brain. Maybe chugging it hadn't been the best idea.

The bill folder is sitting on the table next to Mother's elbow, her AmEx peeking out the top, and Regina itches to sneak a peek at it and find out just how much she's deigned to tip Anna. But there's absolutely no way to accomplish that subtly, so she just smooths her dress and slips into her seat as her mother heaves a huffing sigh and complains about how long it must take to pick up a check.

With their little tête-à-tête in the hallway, there's no way Anna had dropped the bill less than a couple of minutes ago, but Mother is clearly ready to be done with this little outing. Regina can't say she feels differently.

"Is there somewhere you need to be, Mother?" she asks, a bit more frostily than she'd meant to.

"Not me – you."

"Me?"

"Henry, actually," her father says, much to Regina's confusion. And then he's handing over Henry's birthday card and explaining, "We'd meant to give it to you last week, but, well…"

He doesn't need to finish that sentence, and Regina is glad he doesn't try. The last thing she needs is to incite her mother into another round about her terrible rudeness.

She passes the card over to Henry, who wastes very little time in peeling open the flap of the envelope and pulling out the folded paper inside. The card is a fairly generic "For our grandson, on his birthday," but whatever's written inside has him perking up a little and exclaiming, "Cool! Really?"

Henry looks up between his grandparents, Cora's look of pleasure is pinched just a little at the corners of her eyes, but Henry Sr.'s is genuine and warm.

"We thought perhaps you'd like to follow in your mother's footsteps," Cora tells him.

Regina frowns at that, curiosity driving her to lean over and read the card for herself, her brows lifting slowly as she sees what's written inside.

_To our dear Henry –_

_We hope you had a wonderful party yesterday – you are so grown up and we are so proud of the young man you are becoming. We know you've admired your mother's equestrian trophies several times, and thought it was time for you to learn to ride._

_For your birthday this year, we've arranged ten weeks of horseback riding lessons. We hope you enjoy them!_

_Love,_

_Grandpa Henry and Grandma Cora_

It's in her father's handwriting, but she'd have known he was the one who wrote it from the content – hell, from the "grandma" before her mother's name alone. Cora had never looked forward to grandmotherhood.

"You got him riding lessons?" Regina asks her father curiously, a smile working its way onto her face.

"Every Sunday for the next ten weeks – starting today. You were supposed to know last week, but I didn't want to ruin the surprise by telling you earlier," he explains. "We thought it might be something he'd enjoy – but I know it's an added weekly commitment, so I thought maybe… I could drive him?"

Her father's hopeful expression melts her heart a little; Mother may be a frigid bitch who tries to insert herself in Regina's life at every inopportune turn, but Daddy, he just wants to help.

"We thought perhaps we could have a weekly brunch," Cora speaks up, and Regina's stomach sours. "Here, at the Club – the stable is only about twenty minutes away."

Her father rushes to trod over the idea (thank God), saying, "Or, you could just have Sunday afternoons to yourself. I'd be happy to pick him up from home, so you could spend the day running errands, or doing laundry, or…"

"Dating," Cora inserts, but Regina knows it's a pointed barb meant for Daddy and his dismissal of Cora's weekly brunch idea as much as it is for her Sahara-esque love life, so she lets it go.

She plasters on a smile that is mostly genuine, and says, "I think a little bonding time for you and Henry would be great." She turns to the younger Henry, asking, "What do you think, sweetheart?"

"I think it sounds awesome!" he agrees, beaming.

**.::.**

It turns out Henry's lesson is in just forty minutes, so they head straight for the valet once brunch has been paid for, and Regina honestly can't decide whose car she hopes appears first. Mother's, so she can watch her drive away and have a moment to breathe, or hers, so she can leave Cora in the dust.

Daddy wants to join them for Henry's first lesson, while her Mother could not have less interest in spending the afternoon in a barn. No surprise there – if there isn't a ribbon to be won, Mother's no fan of spending a day near the stables.

Regina is grateful at the chance for a little time alone with her father – too much time alone with just _herself_ might let her work herself into a good brood, or push her into poor solutions to keep her mind busy. Like texting Robin, who just three minutes ago had shot her a message that read, _Roland and Tuck both rolled in dog shit today. Is your day better or worse than mine so far?_

She has no doubt he'd meant it to make her smile, and it had, ever so briefly. She'd turned her back slightly to hide it from her parents, shooting back a quick: _Marginally better. My dog shit is only metaphorical._

She gets another from him as her car pulls up to the curb and the valet steps out with her keys. It reads: _Yours smells better no doubt. Mine had to be hosed off_

Regina tucks her phone into her purse and takes her keys as Henry gives Cora a hug goodbye. Regina doesn't make any move to do the same, and neither does her mMother.

Instead, Regina tips the valet, wishes him a pleasant rest of his weekend, and watches her son climb into the back seat of the car.

She does cave to a stiff, "Goodbye, Mother," unable to give Cora the cold shoulder _entirely._

Cora offers her a brittle smile in return, then says almost kindly, "Enjoy the rest of your day, sweetheart."

Regina is just about to sink into her seat as well, when Daddy reaches for her elbow and asks, "Why don't you let me drive?"

Regina frowns. "I don't mind driving."

"I'm sure you don't, but you always have to drive and I know the way," he says, giving her arm a little squeeze and urging, "Relax for half an hour."

Ah. Okay. She sees what this is. The inevitable coddling that follows her mother's more temperamental outbursts.

She's not in the mood today, though, so she insists softly, "I'm fine. She's been worse."

But Daddy just hands her the little bag of leftovers and insists again, "Sweetheart, let me drive."

He's looking at her, willing her to see something. It takes a moment, but when his fingers reach out and grasp hers, squeezing them over the handle of the bag as he says, "I insist," it finally clicks.

He wants to drive so she can eat. The leftovers were meant for _her_.

Regina's eyes well with tears that she quickly blinks away, nodding and conceding, "Okay, you can drive. Thank you, Daddy."

The smile he gives her is just a little bit sad, but his voice is warm when he says, "Anything for you, sweetheart."

She passes him her keys, and rounds the front of her Mercedes, setting the bag of leftovers on the floor of the car while she buckles in and pops open the glove box to grab one of the few plastic-wrapped sets of disposable cutlery she keeps stashed in there.

They're driving away as she grabs the leftovers and pulls the top open – it's not much, Daddy had eaten most of his plate. But then again, Regina had cleaned hers (aside from most of that stilton), so the three pieces of shrimp and maybe half-dozen forkfuls of grits left behind are just enough food to fill her without leaving her feeling stuffed.

Knowing that doesn't help with the niggling guilt she feels – or maybe it's not so much guilt, but shame. Shame that she's a grown woman—a thirty-five year old woman—who is sitting in the front seat of her car eating food her father smuggled her right under her mother's nose.

She shouldn't have to live this way.

It's embarrassing, this secret, the way she has to twist herself in knots to avoid the sharp edge of Mother's abuse. She shouldn't have to live with it, but she does, and today she _has_ , so she tells herself that Mother is out of sight now and she can enjoy some rich brunch fare in peace and guilt-free. (She doesn't always _listen_ to herself, but she tries.)

She's lifted one delicious, decadent bite of grits to her mouth when Henry pipes up from the back seat, asking her curiously, "You're eating again already? We just left lunch."

The grits turn to glue on her tongue and she sets her fork down into the takeout box immediately, forcing herself to swallow down the mouthful as shame burns hot in her cheeks, wet along her lashes.

He doesn't know, couldn't know, not really, about the visceral reaction she would have to _You're eating again already?_ after just having spent an hour around the table with her mother. He hadn't said that on purpose, hadn't said it to _hurt her_ , at least. But for a moment, the question steals her voice away; she doesn't know how to answer, all she can think is _Not him, too_.

Her father doesn't miss her little moment of defeat, and much to her mortification, he calls her on it with a too-sympathetic, "Regina."

She just shakes her head, murmurs, "It's fine," and moves to close the box back up.

He says her name again, " _Regina_ ," and then Henry's worried voice comes to her from the back seat.

"Did I say something wrong?"

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

Regina rakes a hand through her hair, turning her face toward the passenger door just a little to hide it from her son.

God, she's pathetic. Pathetic, and stupid, and _childish_ , and if she's not careful, her eleven-year-old is going to see just how much. Just how bad she is at hiding, just how broken—

She thinks of the rubber band that's supposed to be around her wrist, the one she had slipped off and left on her dresser next to the pair of earrings she'd decided against this morning. The one she should be snapping like a fiend if she was going to be a good little patient. But a brunch with Mother is no place for snapping rubber bands, so she'd left it behind.

Thank God.

"You didn't say anything wrong," Daddy answers for her, and then he just makes it all worse: "Your mom didn't eat enough at brunch, so she's eating now."

 _Couldn't have chosen a better way to phrase that?_ she thinks, but all she says is a warning, "Daddy."

"He's a smart boy," Daddy argues. "He's going to see it soon, if he doesn't already."

Tears burn hot along her lashes, her guts twisting with a desperate thought that _He'd better fucking not_ , because if her _son_ can see the remnants of her eating disorder, she'll just about die.

"See what?" Henry asks, and Regina opens her mouth to answer, to say, _Nothing_ , but Daddy speaks up first _again_.

And what he says surprises her: "Your grandmother is a bully."

Her son says, "Oh," and then, "She's mean to Mom," and Regina has to grit her teeth against a fresh wave of tears, turning her head toward the window so Henry can't see.

She didn't want him to _know_ that, she didn't want him to see. But he's not stupid, and her mother is not subtle, and he knows. It was only a matter of time, but it rips her guts up, cracks her heart down the middle to know that she hasn't been able to protect him from this.

"Yes, she is," her father says sadly, and she wishes he wouldn't. Wishes he would just stop, but she can't tell him so without betraying her tears, and she does _not_ want her son to know she's crying like a wounded little child because her _mother_ is a _bully._

"And your mom stood up to her today, and she should be very proud of that," Daddy continues, Regina presses her knuckles to her lips and sniffles as quietly as possible. "But it made your grandmother angry, and when she's angry, she embarrasses your mom."

"Daddy, please stop," Regina whispers, wiping as subtly as she can at the tears slipping down her cheeks.

But Henry, her sweet Henry, he just asks, "What do you mean?"

God, this is hell. This is absolute hell.

"She tries to make your mom feel bad about herself, and a lot of the time she does that by making her feel bad about the things that she eats," her father says, and God, she should just… could just… She wants to yank open this car door and barrell roll out onto the side of the freeway. She is _trapped_ here with this conversation she never wanted to have, and could this day get any worse?

(It could; she shouldn't tempt fate.)

And then it _does_ , because Henry asks, "Like on Mother's Day?" and Regina can't hide the sniffle anymore, her nose is too full of drippy, tear-induced snot.

Daddy shifts a little in his seat, and says, "Yes. Your mom ate less today so your grandma couldn't criticize her choices. But I knew we'd be going to the stables, and I knew your grandma wouldn't want to go with us, so I saved some of my lunch for Regina. I know she likes it."

She's wiping at tears again, her perfectly applied makeup no doubt in shambles, and she needs to _stop this_ before Henry realizes what a wreck they've made her.

Henry says, "Oh," and then, "If Grandma's a bully, why don't you ever stop her?" and Regina decides that's enough.

Pride be damned, this conversation is over.

She wipes at her tears and sucks in a breath (her father is suddenly very quiet), then turns to face her son, and says, "Okay, enough. We're not talking about this anymore. Grandpa is right; Grandma can be a bully, and it's hurtful. And today, when you weren't there, she said something that… embarrassed me. A lot. But she's not here anymore, and the three of us are going to have a good afternoon, okay?"

Henry nods, frowning at Regina with something far too close to pity for her liking, but she forces a smile – one that becomes far more genuine when he tells her, "Well, Grandpa and I think you can eat whatever you want. So you should eat your grits before they get cold."

They're already mostly cold, but she nods anyway, and says, "Yes, I should."

Regina turns back toward the front of the car, popping open her takeout container again and forking up another bite of grits. They taste less like glue this time, but she still has to force the first tiny bite down with a thick swallow.

It's too quiet in the car all of a sudden; Daddy's motormouth has stopped running, and Henry is silent in the back seat, so Regina reaches over and punches the radio into life.

She doesn't know the song that's playing – it's something new and poppy, not really her style. But it's noise, and that's enough.

The ride to the stables isn't terribly long, and she wants to finish filling her belly before they get there, so she spears a piece of shrimp and takes a bite – and only then does she remember that the last time she ate shrimp she'd ended up a miserable, puking mess. The memory has cold sweat breaking out along her spine, and once again she has to work to swallow. The shrimp is good – objectively, she knows that. It's well-cooked, and well-seasoned, and she has no doubt that the Club has good food safety practices.

Knowing all of that doesn't stop her from freeing the rest of her shrimp from the fork, and pushing it and its little friends to the edge of the container.

She can live without the shrimp.

**.::.**

"I really wish you hadn't done that," Regina tells her father a short while later as they lean against the rail of a paddock in the warm afternoon sun. She's traded her heels for the flats she keeps in her trunk for just such moments of need, and has plopped a pair of sunglasses over eyes that were thankfully not _too_ ruined by her little episode in the car.

Thank God for waterproof mascara.

"Done what?" her father asks, and Regina scowls slightly.

She watches Henry perched on the back of a dapple gray mare, looking more and more comfortable with each passing second—a sight that should warm her, but she's too preoccupied. Tack this onto the list of things Mother has stolen from her.

"Said what you did in the car. About Mother," she explains. "I don't… talk to Henry about those things. I try to keep him insulated from them."

"Regina, he's a smart boy," Daddy says. "Try as you might, he'll know when things aren't right. Children know when the adults around them aren't getting along. Didn't you?"

Regina exhales deeply and offers a little nod.

"I suppose," she concedes. She keeps her gaze on Henry, gives him a little smile and wave when he looks toward her and flashes a happy grin. Then she says, "But 'unhappy' seemed to be the default in our home. It was impossible not to notice that things weren't… good."

She hears the words as she's saying them and worries for a second that they'll upset Daddy, but he just hums his agreement. There's a regretful sort of sadness in his voice when he says, "You're right. And I'm sorry about that."

"I used to wonder why one of you didn't just leave," she confesses softly, grateful for the shades ensuring she doesn't have to look her father in the eye for that one. "It didn't seem like you were… in love. You were never affectionate in private, you never said 'I love you,' and then you started sleeping in separate rooms, and… It never seemed that our home had much love in it."

"It did, once," he tells her, his voice hushed just like hers. This is maybe far too private a discussion for a place this public, but Henry and his riding instructor are several yards away, and the light breeze is blowing toward Regina and her father rather than away, so they have some privacy. "There was a time where I loved your mother very much. But it… faded."

"Why?" she wonders. "What happened?"

Regina turns her head then, watches her father take in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He looks suddenly very old, or at least… burdened.

"You were born," he says, and it suckerpunches the air right out of Regina. She'd always wondered, but to hear him _say_ it…

The sensation lasts mere seconds, before he continues, "And it was the happiest day of my life. You were the most precious thing I had ever seen. And for the first few years, things were good. But as you got older, she got… well, the way she is. When you were three, she gave you a smack one day, right across the face. You'd snuck a cookie."

Regina's eyes well with sudden, hot tears. Of course it was a fucking cookie. God forbid she _eat_.

"You screamed and screamed, your little cheek all red. Her ring left this small purple bruise; I'll never forget it."

Regina blinks away her tears, and watches him speak. He seems far off, lost in a memory that makes his frown lines deepen.

"I told her," he continues, "that if she ever raised a hand to you like that again, I would call the police on her myself."

"You did?" she asks him, surprised by the breathless wobble of her voice. Daddy had stood up to Mother now and then, sure, but she can't imagine him threatening to have her arrested. That was never his style.

"I did," he tells her. "She said I'd never dare."

Regina rolls her eyes. "Of course she did."

He smiles wryly at her. "She's never liked being challenged, your mother. But I told her I was serious. I said a spanking was one thing, but if she left bruises… I don't know if she ever believed me, but I told her to find another way to discipline you or I'd make sure she never got the chance again."

Regina can't help her hollow scoff, and her mutter of, "Well, she certainly found other ways…"

Her father makes a noise, and says, "I knew when I fell for her that she was tenacious, determined, even ruthless when she thought she needed to be. It was how she'd gotten herself where she was in life, and I had admired most of those things in her. I didn't see the darker side of them until it was too late. I didn't know how cruel she could be until we had you. She loves you, I _know_ she does, sweetheart. But she…"

Regina shakes her head, tells him, "She says she does, and I want to believe it, but… she has a funny way of showing it. The things she's said, and done… I could never treat Henry that way. Never."

"You're a better mother than she was," Daddy tells her easily, and she can't help but smile. 'Better than Mother' isn't exactly a high bar to jump, but it's been the goal of her life with Henry. "You want Henry to be loved, and happy. I see it every day. She always wanted you to be perfect."

"And nobody is," Regina mutters. "Least of all children, who are still learning how to be people."

"Your mother didn't get much of a chance to be a child," he says, and Regina turns her gaze back to Henry and his horse. If Daddy is going to make excuses for Mother again, today, Regina doesn't particularly want to watch him do it. "She was so young when her mother died, and her father was a worthless drunk. Everything she had, she built herself, but she was never proud of it. She's always been ashamed – that she didn't _start_ with more. That she wasn't born into the life she wanted – but you, you were. She wanted her perfect home, and her perfect family, her perfect daughter. I watched her use her mean streak to get it, and it… choked out all the love I'd had for her."

She looks at her father, then. She'd almost forgotten what had gotten them onto this topic in the first place. Loving Mother, and then not.

"I couldn't love anyone who hurt you the way she did," her father says, and Regina presses her lips together and takes a deep breath as she feels the tears threaten to surface again.

She shouldn't say the thought that's on her mind. Shouldn't voice it, because it's unkind, and it's… it's over, it doesn't matter now. But it's there, on the tip of her tongue, and she lets it loose anyway: "You couldn't love her, but you couldn't leave? You just… If you hated it so much, and if you couldn't stop her, then… why did we stay?"

"I thought about leaving," he confesses, and it's cold comfort. She'd wondered, all these years, if he'd ever considered just walking. Just leaving. She's not sure whether she feels better or worse that he thought about it, and stayed anyway. "I'd hoped that as you got older, easier to handle, she'd change. Get better. When she didn't, I thought about leaving, but… I knew she wouldn't give you up without a fight."

Regina scoffs. "Please. I'm sure she'd have been glad to be rid of me. I was always such a disappointment."

"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure," Daddy tells her. "What kind of a mother walks away from her own child? What would people think, if she lost you? If you lived with me instead of her?"

"You think she'd have fought for me for, what? Appearances' sake?" As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she realizes that yes, of course she would. "Nevermind. Nothing matters to Mother more than appearances."

Henry nods, and says, "And mothers get custody far more often than fathers. Outwardly, she looked like a perfectly fine parent, and she doesn't believe the way she treats you is wrong, she never has. It would have been on me, and you, to prove she wasn't fit. I didn't want to put you through that. Your mother is not above winning by whatever means necessary – bribery, favors, threats. I knew how ugly a custody battle could get; I didn't want that for you. And I wasn't going to leave you alone with her. Never. She was bad enough with me there, I couldn't imagine the hell she'd have put you through if I left you behind."

"So you stayed… for me?"

"Everything I do is for you," he tells her, and Regina laughs wetly. She doesn't really know what else _to_ do.

How is one supposed to react to being told that their father stayed in a loveless marriage to a heartless bitch, just so that _she_ wouldn't be hurt even more. Mirroring threads of guilt and resentment twist and tangle and weave their way around Regina's heart, and she presses a hand over the needle-prick ache of them.

"You should have tried," she whispers. "They talk to kids, don't they? Ask them what they want, consider their wishes? I could have asked to be with you."

"Maybe," her father says regretfully. "But what if I'd lost? And anyway, by the time you were that old… Well, you were sick, and there were—" he glances away, his mouth tightening for a moment "—other things. She was at her worst in your teen years, and I was so scared for you. You were wasting away in front of my eyes, pushing yourself so hard to please her, and I thought… If I lost you then, I'd lose you for good."

Regina takes a deep breath, pushing away the memories of being fifteen and hungry. Fifteen and obsessed. Fifteen and trying so damn hard to win her mother's approval that she couldn't think straight anymore.

Still, "You'd have won, then. When I was fifteen, there wasn't a sitting judge that wouldn't have let you have me, the way I was. The things I told my therapist, I was honestly surprised they never tried to take me away. Sometimes I wanted them to."

"They raised concerns," he says, and her brows lift slightly. Interesting. "Your mother was convinced that the doctors were quacks – she didn't like what they had to say about your health, mental or physical. She wanted to pull you out of treatment, said we could handle everything just fine on our own, without the... embarrassment of all that."

He says "embarrassment" carefully, like he's wincing around the word, like he doesn't want to hurt her with it. She doesn't know why – it's not as if Mother hadn't made her mortification over Regina's illness perfectly clear. She'd hardly blame Daddy for repeating history as Mother remembers it.

"You didn't," Regina points out needlessly. "She hated it, I knew she did. But I was at every appointment, faithfully, until… I was better."

"Well, I told your mother there wasn't a chance in hell that we were stopping any recommended portion of your treatment," Daddy tells her, and she smiles. Of course he did – _that_ doesn't surprise her. He may not have spared her the damage of Mother's abuse, but he was always there to pick up the pieces. It comes as no surprise that he had ensured she got patched up right when everything truly fell apart. "It was a… difficult time for us. Your mother and me. But I had enough leverage to make sure we got you the help you needed, for as long as you needed it."

Regina pushes down at the guilt that bubbles up at the words _difficult time_. Her illness isn't her fault, the help she needed was not her fault. She's had that drilled into her again and again and again over the years. Still, she's very much aware that, "That's when you moved into the guest room – when I was in treatment. I remember that. Something broke, and… it never got fixed."

Daddy still sleeps in the guest room. His room, now. For the last twenty years, it's been his. But she remembers, vividly, the stony silence in their home that year. The quiet tension around the dinner table. The slow migration of Daddy's things from the master closet to the guest one. The way her parents avoided each other, or glowered, or made a point _not_ to glower.

Knowing that Mother had wanted her out of therapy, and Daddy had wanted her very much _in_ therapy, she can't help but wonder if that had been the final burden that their marriage just couldn't bear the weight of.

"My treatment… was the final nail in our coffin, wasn't it?" she asks carefully, trying to keep her voice even, and steady, and adult.

"God, no," her father says, surprising her. "No, sweetheart, it wasn't you. It was…" For a moment he looks like he's wrestling over something, his brow pinching, his eyes searching her face. And then he just says, "It was between your mother and me."

"You don't have to spare me, Daddy," Regina insists. "It was twenty years ago; you can admit it. I just wish that in the time since then you'd—"

She's about to say that she wishes he had found a way to free _himself_ at the very least, to leave her once Regina was gone. To not waste his life with someone he didn't want to be with just because ten-year-old Regina needed a protector.

But he interrupts her with a blurted, "She had an affair, Regina," that stops her dead in her tracks.

For a second, she stares at her father, bewildered, and then she simply says, "What?"

Daddy takes a deep breath, and squints off into the distance as if he's trying to see for miles. If Regina wasn't so dumbstruck, she'd probably be thinking that he's just stalling for time, but right now, she's not thinking at all.

_An affair?_

"That's why I moved rooms," he says, finally, what feels like an eternity later. (It's not, it's less than a minute, but it feels… God, it feels like forever, with the whickering of the horse to her right, the rustle of breeze through the nearby trees, the steady voice of Henry's instructor wafting over in patches when the wind blows just right.) "There was… a man. And I found out. That year when you were in treatment, I found out. That was the... final nail. Not you."

"She…" Regina's not sure why she's so stunned, but she is. There'd never been much in the way of love between her parents, but she'd always assumed there was fidelity. She's floored, scouring her memory for any trace of this, of an affair, of another man, someone who had been around, someone Mother had talked about many times, but… there's nothing. "Who was it?"

Daddy shakes his head, says far too quickly that, "It doesn't matter who. It wasn't you that destroyed our family, that's what matters."

"Was it... Did I ever meet him?"

Her father says her name, "Regina," in a way that actually sounds a bit pained, and she reminds herself that they're talking about his wife cheating on him, and maybe she should try to be just a little more sensitive. Except, they're also talking about an _affair_ that she's heard nothing about in twenty years, despite the fact that it nearly ended their already feeble marriage.

The realization that Mother cheated on him and he stayed _for her_ , to protect her, because Mother was… Mother… makes her feel vaguely ill. Nausea rises up her middle and she presses a hand to it, shaking her head and asking him, "Daddy, if she had an affair, why didn't you go? You could have left her, you had good reason, and I could have asked to stay with you. I was old enough, I could have spoken for myself."

"They wouldn't have let me have you," he tells her, and that's just ridiculous.

Ridiculous, and cowardly, and she scoffs and tells him, "You don't know that. Of course they would have. She was an unfaithful wife and a damaging mother; they would have given me to you, but you never gave them the chance."

She's angry all of a sudden. Shouldn't be, maybe, but God… things could have been easier – even if it had just been for a little while, a year or two, things could have been _easier_. And she'd be able to cut her mother off for stretches of time now without having to worry about not seeing Daddy, about…

"I wanted to leave," he hisses at her, and she remembers that they need to keep their voices down. "I tried, but your mother wouldn't have it."

Regina scoffs and says, "I don't think the dumpee really gets a say – believe me, I know, I've been dumped. Mother couldn't have forced you to stay if you wanted to go."

He gives her a face – one she rarely sees on him. The one that says _Listen to yourself_.

"We have a prenup," he says to her, calmly, but she can hear the edge of nervous temper under his voice. Daddy never does like when his dander is up. "And like most prenups, it has a fidelity clause. Your mother wasn't entitled to anything if our marriage ended due to her infidelity. She'd have gotten nothing in the divorce." Regina's frown deepens, and then he poses a question: "How do you think your mother felt about that?"

Realization prickles over her like cold raindrops, and she answers, "She'd find that unacceptable." Her father nods, and Regina exhales heavily, not entirely sure she wants an answer (but needing one anyway) when she asks, "What did she threaten you with?"

Her father looks over toward Henry, doesn't answer her right away. This time she's aware enough to know he's stalling, so she urges, "There were threats, right? It must have been something good – you had your out, and you know I'm right. So what did she say to convince you that you couldn't go?"

It takes him a little while to answer her, and Regina feels anxious nerves wriggling under her skin, up her spine, burrowing into her stomach and making it feel hot and uncomfortable.

But finally, he tells her, "You were so sick, then. And your mother, she wouldn't hear of inpatient treatment. No hospitals; people would talk." He laughs softly then, but it's bitter. "People talked anyway. We had you with the best therapist, highly recommended – and used by other families in our social circle. The nutritionist, too. Your treatment was a poorly kept secret, but how you got there…" Daddy shakes his head, breathes deeply, and says, "Your mother threatened to tell people it was my fault."

"Your… fault?" Regina asks, shaking her head, brow furrowing in confusion. "Daddy, how could it be _your_ fault? And who would believe that? You were always the one to coddle me, to encourage me toward more decadent food, or try to get me to share your dessert. It drove me crazy, but… nobody would believe that you twisted me up that much, Daddy."

His, "Oh, they might," is a dark mutter that has Regina doubling down on her argument.

"Daddy, you were never the one that pushed me."

"I know that," he tells her. "But that's… not what she'd have said."

"Then what?"

He looks at her, then, pain and indecision in his eyes, and he says her name that way he does, all regret and hesitation.

"Daddy, you have to tell me," she insists. "If you don't, I'll spend all my time wondering, and I'll try to get it out of you again later. If you tell me, that's it. It'll be out, and done, and we can leave it in the past where it belongs."

Her father sighs heavily, and stares down at the railing beneath his squeezing fingers. Then he speaks very carefully, very evenly, and rips the bottom out from under her world: "Your mother said if I tried to file for divorce, she would claim I had been… inappropriate with you. That _that_ was what had driven you to such extremes. Even if I denied it, even if you did, the authorities would be obligated to investigate if the claim was made during custody proceedings, and whether it was true or not…" He looks up at her, then, but he's blurry through the hot tears lining her lashes. "You know the people we know. It wouldn't have mattered if it was true. Once the rumors had started, I'd have been ruined. I couldn't leave her, and I couldn't try to take you."

Regina blinks, and wipes at the tears that fall, then rubs her hand over her mouth and tells herself to breathe.

She feels sick.

She feels bile rising up, up, and has to swallow it down, down, because she can't very well vomit right here in the grass.

"She was…" Her voice is breathy, thin; she can hear the way she gasps into it as she whispers a horrified, "She was going to say you m-molested me?"

Her father nods; Regina lets out a hysterical little laugh.

Her mother is insane. I mean, she'd always known, but this… this is just beyond the pale. And this has been just… just sitting there, festering, for two decades. These secrets, and these lies, and did she ever really know her parents at all? There was a whole other life, a whole game of strategy, of war, of embattled territory, going on right under her nose and she'd never even seen it.

She'd never seen it, but she'd caused it, and the realization has her dropping her head to her crossed hands (they're gripping the fencing so tightly she can feel it digging into her palms), just so she can count to twenty and steady her breathing and not throw up.

This is all because of her. Mother would never have been able to get away with this if she hadn't been sick. Daddy could have left years earlier if he hadn't been trying to protect her.

But there she'd been, ruining everyone's lives and her own along with it, all because she was too weak-willed to survive her mother.

"Sweetheart, I'm so sorry," her father says, one warm hand settling on her shoulders. She rolls it immediately to push him away, and he draws his hand back. She doesn't want to be touched right now, doesn't want anyone to…

And then it occurs to her that maybe drawing back from him after he admits he was blackmailed into a marriage by threats of claiming he'd _touched_ her might send the wrong messages, so she lifts her head, looks at him, and says, "No, _I'm_ sorry. If I hadn't been sick—"

But Daddy will have none of it.

He shushes her, and reaches out again, pulling her in close and hugging her tightly. Regina rests her chin on his shoulder and hugs him back as he murmurs assurances that it isn't her fault, it was never her fault. That she can't blame herself for Mother's selfishness, or her manipulation.

Regina's brain feels like a swarm of angry, buzzing bees, thoughts whirring so quickly that they all bleed together, but the one thing she knows is this:

She's not speaking to her mother again any time soon.

**.::.**

That sick feeling lingers with Regina for the rest of the afternoon and evening. She thinks she hides it well, is fairly certain Henry never does see through her carefully held together Mom mask, but inside, she's a roiling mess of nauseated disgust.

Dinner is a battle.

She doesn't want Henry to know, doesn't want him to see (how many dinners like this did Daddy have, she wonders? How often did he try to hide from her how fucked up her own mother was?), but her stomach feels oily and hot and it pitches and rocks.

She makes chicken and rice, eats at the countertop while she talks to Henry all about his riding lesson, pretending to be very involved in reorganizing one of the kitchen cabinets, when really she is just trying to disguise how little she's eating. She can't eat with a stomach this sour, every bite sticks in her throat, gets forced down with a heavy swallow past the knot of anxiety that has taken up residence there.

She keeps hearing it in her head— _Had been... inappropriate with you_ —cannot shake the memory of it, the lead weight of it on her soul. She feels dirty, feels like Mother has made her dirty.

She wants to cry.

She wants to throw things.

She wants to scream.

Wants to just bury her face in a pillow and yell until she doesn't feel this sickly rage in her gut, or call her mother and rip her a new one or twelve about the _audacity_ of blaming Daddy for her illness when it was Mother who twisted her into this… this… defective, neurotic person.

She wants to do all of that, but she has an eleven-year-old who spent his afternoon on the back of a dapple gray horse, and he is happy, excited, talks about the saddle, and the reins, and the trotting, and the new riding boots Grandpa had had his teacher pick up for him so he could ride today, and how he got to brush the horse, and he's going to learn to clean her hooves, and how maybe someday he can jump like she did when she was young.

Regina forces a smile, and a, "If you like it enough, sweetheart, of course you'll learn," but all she can think of is riding pants that slipped at bony hips, and that day she won a blue ribbon but stumbled as she dismounted because she was so fucking _hungry,_ and Mother threatened to blame it all on Daddy, and he just _took it_ to _protect her,_ and she wants to cry, and scream, and throw things.

She makes it through Henry's bedtime, and half a chicken breast. A little bit of rice. Waits until her son is asleep, and then she slips into leggings and a sports bra, and she runs.

She has to run, she has to run this out, because there is all this pent up _junk_ inside of her, and it cannot live there, it cannot stay there, she will suffocate. It's climbing her spine, it's scratching its claws against her vertebrae, she cannot succumb to two anxiety attacks in as many days, but her mother is a _monster_ , how could she have done this?

And how did Regina not know? How did they keep this from her? Her whole life, the last twenty years, everything she knew, every time she stepped into that house, every moment with her mother, this _thing_ was there, this secret, this dirty, cruel thing.

How _dare_ she?

How dare she do this, to him, to them, to Daddy and to her, how _dare_ she trap them like this?

So she runs out the anger, or she tries to, but she's alone now, finally, for the the first time since she was dealt this body blow, and her mind is racing, her heart is racing, it's only been five minutes, but it's racing, racing, she's panting, and—she realizes—crying.

There are tears on her cheeks, squeezing a fist around her throat and choking her, and her eyes blur, her chest feels tight, and she stumbles a little on the belt.

Shit. _Shit._

Regina fumbles half-blind as she stabs off the power to the treadmill, her pulse pounding in her ears, bile rising, shaky and hot and foreboding up under her sternum.

 _Inappropriate with you_ and _I could never love anyone who hurt you_ and _blackmail_ are finally getting a good grip on her guts, and she regrets dinner now, because there's something in her stomach. It may not be much, but it's enough that she can feel it rising, enough that she is turning tail for the door of the den as sweat breaks out along her hairline. She's been pushing this down since Daddy told her this afternoon, and she knows that she's not going to be able to fight her body on it much longer.

She's forgotten about her phone for a second, her headphones, and she takes two steps and has to swing it up by the cord, gathering her phone in shaky hands as she makes a mad dash for the powder room. She drops everything to the floor with a clatter, hits her knees in front of the toilet bowl, her head swimming, her chest tight, bile rising, rising, rising until she is bent over and puking up that little bit of chicken and rice.

She retches, and coughs, and sputters, and her heart is still racing, her chest still feels tight.

Even when her anxious stomach has finished its revolt, her heart gallops, and anxiety is a corset around her middle, the stays pulled tighter and tighter with every passing second.

Shit, shit, _shit_.

She tries to talk herself out of it, scoots back until her back is against the wall and shuts her eyes and tries to think of five things she can hear. But Henry is in bed and she's practically alone in the house, there aren't five things _to_ hear.

She needs something to focus on, something other than her hitching breaths.

She knows it's weakness when she reaches for her phone, but her fingers are shaky, she needs to calm down and it's the first thing she can think of to bring herself some relief.

**.::.**

Marian would kill him for this.

Marian would kill him, but Marian isn't here, so as Robin lights up a fresh joint and sits back with a bowl of cereal and the remote, he resolves not to feel the least bit guilty about it. Roland is snug in his new big-boy bed, sleeping peacefully in a corner of Robin's room. And Robin has had a rather long and trying day of parenting, so if he wants to get a little buzzed while watching old episodes of _Top Gear_ and eating Fruity Pebbles, he's going to do just that.

He takes a long inhale, and a slow exhale – and nearly coughs when the buzzing of his phone against the table startles him.

As he reaches forward to grab it, he's almost certain it's going to be Marian asking to FaceTime Roland to sleep or some such thing. Because the universe is laughing at him today, and she has a knack for showing up when he's most ill fit for her presence.

Thankfully, it's not her. It's a text from Regina: _Is Roland still up?_

Robin frowns, and shoots back a quick, _No, he's out for the night_

His phone buzzes again almost immediately, another message from her: _Can I come over?_

Can she come over, alone, once she's made sure his son is asleep? Interesting.

Robin tells himself not to get his hopes up, and shoots back, _Of course. Always._

Then he reaches forward and stubs out his joint in the ashtray on the far side of the coffee table, before tucking it out of sight on the dusty-magazine-and-coloring-book-littered shelf below.

She's at his door in minutes.

Robin mutes the TV and rises to greet the ringing doorbell before she presses it again and sets Tuck barking in a way that'll wake Roland.

Whatever hopes he'd had that she might be here for a social call are dashed as soon as he sees her. She's somehow both pale and flushed at the same time, her hair tousled, and she's in workout gear, just leggings and one of those bra tops, her belly all bare and tempting (he tells himself to stop being a wanker, and focus on the arms she has wrapped around her middle and the way her clenched fists are trembling).

Robin reaches out a hand to her shoulder, guiding her into the house and sending up a prayer of thanks that John is out for the night, because something is clearly wrong, and he knows Regina well enough to know she wouldn't want another set of eyes on her when she's all fraught like this.

Her shoulders are hitching under his palm as she sucks in shaky, uneven breaths, and her voice is far from steady when she admits pitifully, "I had a really bad day."

Anger burns hot in his gut, a fiery hatred for a certain Cora Mills and whatever the hell she'd said or done to set Regina off this way. Whatever it was, he'll do his damnedest to counteract it. Will cover her in compliments and soft touches until she forgets every word of verbal violence done to her, and he's going to start right now.

He draws her in close, wraps his arms around her shoulders, and murmurs, "It's alright, love; it's over now."

It doesn't surprise him when she breaks loose a sob, or when those clenched fists move from her belly to the back of his t-shirt, gripping there as she leans into him and lets the dam break. She's shaking, and it infuriates him, has him running one hand in slow passes over the length of her back and shushing her gently as they stand there and rock ever so slightly.

"I had to hold it all in because of H-Henry." Her voice is high-pitched, squeezed through a throat thick with tears as she mutters into his neck, "But he w-went to bed and now I c-can't breathe, and I'm sorry, I just… I can't breathe, and I need… I had a really bad—"

Robin shushes her again gently, presses a kiss to her brow (it's sweaty, but the smooth skin over her spine isn't), and asks softly, "What can I do?"

"I need to— I can't— I can't focus, I can't breathe…"

She's hyperventilating, he realizes. Those short hitching breaths are pulling in too much air, not letting out, and she's pressing a hand to her sternum now, and rubbing it between them, and he needs to make it better for her, but he doesn't really know _how_.

But this isn't new for her, he's gathered that much. It's happened before, it happened just yesterday. So he asks, "How can I help you breathe, love? How can I help you focus?"

Her answer doesn't make any sense to him: "Five, four, three, two, one."

"What?"

"It's a— It's a relaxation technique," she explains, pressing her face into his shoulder for a second and then lifting it to continue, "Five things you can hear, f-four you can touch, three you can see, and two you can smell."

"And one is… taste?" he guesses. All five senses accounted for, right?

Regina nods, and tells him, "It h-helps you focus outward, away from the anxiety, but I—" She tears up again, a whine at the edge of her voice when she says, "It's too quiet at home; I couldn't hear five things, and I can't think, my mind is racing."

No shit.

"Okay, alright," he soothes, leading her into the living room and guiding her toward the couch. "Sit; we'll get through it."

She settles into the corner, her fists balled tightly in her lap as she continues to struggle to find an easy breath, muttering another apology.

"Don't apologize," he assures her, reaching over subtly and pressing the mute button on the remote to bring the TV back to life as he sits right beside her (maybe it's cheating, but he'll cheat if it'll help her calm down), urging her close again as he encourages, "You start with things you can hear, right?"

Regina nods and closes her eyes, her brows pinching.

"The TV," she says, immediately, and then she's scowling even harder, one of her hands unclenching and sliding blindly over until it bumps his thigh, her fingers spreading over the soft material of his sweats and gripping there.

"I'm right here, babe," he murmurs, and she nods again, tries to suck a deep breath in and out, but it's still a bit shaky and rushed.

Her teeth bite into her lower lip for a second, and then she winces, barely more than a whisper when she requests, "Touch me. Please, touch me? It's g-grounding. I'm sorry."

He shushes her gently again and reaches for her, draws her knees up against his lap and her head down against his shoulder again. Touching her is one request he has no problem fulfilling.

"Stop apologizing, love," he chides kindly. "Just tell me four more things you can hear."

Regina nods again, and her breath washes against his collar in unsteady passes as she tries to come up with more responses. Robin waits her out, letting one hand trace what he hopes are soothing trails along the outside of her thigh, his fingers pressing firmly over her spandex-covered skin. His other hand slides up into her hair, fingertips kneading in dark tresses as another attempt to soothe.

"Your fingers scratching my scalp," is her next answer, and he murmurs, _Good, three more_ , and gets, "Your voice." A few seconds later, "Tuck's collar," as the dog comes trotting in from wherever he'd been hiding.

"One more," Robin murmurs, lips against her brow.

It takes a second, but she answers, "My breathing."

Well, there we go. Five down, four to go.

And it's, "Four things you can…" Shit, he can't remember the order. "...see?"

"Touch," she corrects him, and Robin _Ah_ s, and lets the hand on her leg swoop over her knee and down her calf, then back up. "Your shirt," she starts. And then, "The couch."

A wet nose makes itself known, he watches her startle slightly as Tuck noses against her ankle, then gives her a little lick there before he looks at Robin with worried eyes. One of Regina's hands drops blindly to the dog's head, scratching it restlessly as she says, "Tuck…" then repeats herself: "Your shirt, the couch, Tuck…"

"One more," he urges softly. "Focus on what you can feel…"

Her breathing is starting to slow down, steadying out. The more she tries to focus, the more it relaxes, so he lets her take her time, doesn't push. Finally she murmurs, "I can feel my chest loosening," lifting her head and asking, "Can that count?"

Robin smiles at her, and shrugs, and says, "You know the rules; I don't. Do you want it to count?"

She nods, and says, "I do," and that's that.

"Then it counts," he says, and then, "Now three you can see, yeah?"

Regina nods, and easily answers, "You," then looks to her left and smirks. He's not sure he's ever been happier to see her smirk at him,

And then she teases shakily, "Cereal for dinner, huh?" and Robin lets go of some of his worry for her. If she's sassing him, she'll be alright.

"I had dinner with Roland, this is just a snack," he retorts, still rubbing his thumb along her knee as she wraps her arms around her middle, and gives her last two answers.

"Your cereal bowl. And the remote."

"Smell is next?"

"Mmhmm," Regina answers. She's calmer now. Those hitching breaths have evened out.

"Your cologne," is her first offering, before she breathes deeply, a slow inhale, and then tilts her head and gives him a quizzical, "Is that… pot?"

Busted.

Robin smiles sheepishly and reaches for the ashtray he'd tucked away, his snuffed joint still resting on it.

Regina lifts one accusatory brow and asks him, "Are you getting high with your son in the house?"

"No," he draws out. "I was having a bit of a smoke with my son in the house. And besides, I'd just lit it up when you called. I had one toke and then put it out."

She snorts a little, shaking her head at him, and it occurs to Robin that she's stopped shaking, that she's breathing normally again. It seems her little trick really does work.

And because she seems to be feeling better, he feels safe going for the joke, teasing her with, "Maybe you should try a little – help you mellow out."

Regina scoffs, predictably, telling him, "I don't do drugs."

"Neither do I," he shrugs. "It's just weed."

"Which is an illegal drug," she points out.

Robin rolls his eyes, and tells her, "Semantics. And you still have to tell me what you can taste."

Regina frowns a little, swallows slightly, and admits sheepishly, "Vomit."

Well, that goes right ahead and pops their little moment of levity, doesn't it.

"Acute anxiety sometimes makes me throw up," she whispers, her gaze dropping down into her palms, which now rest limply on her thighs between them. She's ashamed of it, he realizes, and his heart aches for her. "And I didn't think… I couldn't breathe, and I needed someone to… focus on. I needed to get out of the house; I didn't want Henry to find me the way I was. I should have brushed." One hand presses to the bare skin of her belly, then slides to wrap her arm around her middle as she mutters sheepishly, "And put on a shirt."

Robin leans in and presses a kiss to her brow. He probably shouldn't, but he can't help it when she looks so sad and self-loathing.

"There's mouthwash in the upstairs loo," he offers. "Under the sink. If you want. And Roland's asleep, but if you're quiet, you can grab a t-shirt from my chest – second drawer down."

Her lips curve up in something that's almost a smile, and she bobs her head again, murmurs, "Thank you." And then, "But I should go. I shouldn't have—"

"Nonsense," he dismisses. "Stay a while. If you go home, you'll just think too much."

Her gaze flicks up to his at that, a little bit guarded all of a sudden. "Yes," she admits. "Probably. But Henry is home alone."

"You locked the door?" he asks, and she nods. "Set the alarm?" Another nod. "Then he's safe as houses. Stay here for a bit and relax."

One of her brows lifts slowly, and she asks haughtily, "And smoke with you?"

"Only if you want," he answers easily. "I don't have to."

When her gaze strays to the ashtray and lingers there thoughtfully, Robin realizes she's actually considering it. That's unexpected. He's more than willing to share (he actually contributed to this batch, so it doesn't feel so much like nicking it from John), but he hadn't expected her to take him up on it.

"It's been a long while since my anxiety was this bad," she admits quietly. "It fades, like now, but it feels… close to the surface. My mind is all…" Regina breathes in and out, half-glances toward his face but doesn't quite make it there, landing on his t-shirt instead and lingering. "There's too much in there. I can't get quiet." She laughs a little at herself, shakes her head, and her voice is harder as she says, "But I also can't get high at the neighbor's while my son sleeps alone at home."

"We don't have to get high," he offers gently. "Just a few puffs to mellow out. And Henry's fine; you're right next door. He'll call if he can't find you."

One of her brows lifts skeptically. "Is it going to mellow me out or make me more anxious? Because I had some pot in college that just made me paranoid, and that's the last thing I need tonight."

Robin grins, teasing, "I knew you had a shady past in there somewhere," and then assuring her, "This is good stuff; it's very mellow. I promise."

"You really think it'll help?"

"Only one way to find out," Robin offers. She chews her lip and considers for a minute, but when she doesn't come to a decision, Robin gives her an out. He scratches lightly at her spandex-covered knee and urges, "Why don't you go rinse your mouth, grab a shirt, and have a little think. When you come back down, we can light up for a few minutes, or we can just watch some telly, or talk…"

He ducks his head a little to catch her eyes, and says, "Whatever you need."

He can still see the last sharp bits of anxiety fraying her edges, but she manages a little smile, a soft, "Okay."

And then she takes a deep breath, and stands, and he watches her head for the stairs.

**.::.**

She finds the mouthwash under the sink, in a cluttered collection of toiletries, and extra toilet paper rolls, and toilet bowl cleaner. She itches to straighten everything, to sort it by use, at the very least—no, to stand everything _up_ at the very _least—_ but she tells herself it's not her mess and not her problem, and screws the cap off the Listerine.

It's sharp and minty, and she swishes it until her gums tingle and her lips burn. She's not stupid.

Well, she _is_ stupid, but she's self-aware. Self-aware, and anxious, and needy, and she'd seen the way he was trying not to look at her bare skin earlier.

Coming here when she's like this was not the smartest idea, and she has a good idea of where it will end up. Especially if she loses every last one of her marbles and _smokes pot_ with him.

So she swishes that mouthwash thoroughly, ensuring that when she eventually kisses him senseless, he'll taste fresh mint and not bitter revelations.

She resolutely avoids the mirror over the sink until after she's spit and rinsed, but she catches her reflection as she wipes her mouth on a towel that probably needs to be laundered, and winces.

She looks like shit.

Her eyes are a little red, her skin a little blotchy (she hates when the anxiety makes her flush, hates the uneven way it sometimes fades), and she looks… unkempt.

She combs fingers through her hair in an attempt to smooth it, licks both her index fingers and rubs at the last vestiges of mascara and eyeliner that have smeared a little beneath her lower lashes. She can't do much else, and the anxiety whispers to her that she doesn't have to worry about kissing him inappropriately, because he's not going to want her looking like this.

And then she gives that anxiety a mental smack, because of course he will, he's Robin. She could show up here after a Carrie-at-the-prom sort of meltdown and he'd probably just tell her red was her color and offer her a clean shirt.

Speaking of...

There's not much more to be done in the bathroom, so she squints to shut out the sight of the mess and tucks the mouthwash back where she found it, then turns out the bathroom light and heads for Robin's room.

It takes her three steps down the hallway before she realizes she doesn't know which room is his. The layout is much like her own place, though, and so she looks from door to door. John would have the master, so Robin is probably…

She hazards a guess on the room closest to her, turning the knob as silently as she can and easing the door open to let the hall light creep in and illuminate the space beyond. The light stretches across the floor and settles across a small bed with a tiny bare foot peeking out from beneath the covers.

Regina smiles at the sight – jackpot.

She leaves the door open for light and slips into his bedroom, glancing around for his dresser. It's on the far wall, on the other side of an unmade bed, but there's something she needs to do first.

Regina tiptoes carefully over toward the toddler bed along the other wall, unable to keep her smile from spreading at the sight of Roland's mop of curls, the curve of his cheek, the way his chubby little fingers clutch his stuffed monkey to his chest. She reaches down carefully to grasp his rogue foot, gently shifting it further toward the center of the bed and gingerly adjusting his blanket to cover it.

He doesn't make so much as a peep, so Regina dares a soft brush of her fingers through his curls before she leaves him in search of a shirt.

She feels a little bit like an intruder in Robin's space, even though she's been invited. And turnabout is fair play, right? He's been in her bedroom – more than once. So she doesn't rush, squints into the darkness to try to make out the color of his bedspread (it's dark, blue or black, maybe, and she thinks it has thin stripes running through it, but the light isn't really reaching this far…), and then strangles a hissed curse word as she trips over a shoe that's been left at the foot of the bed.

She catches herself with a palm on the mattress, rolling her eyes and cursing men who don't know how to put things away properly.

The rest of her journey is smooth sailing, though, and she runs her fingertips down the front of the dresser to find her way from the first drawer to the second. She eases it open gently, and gropes for the first soft cotton she finds, pulling it out and hoping it's a shirt.

It is, so she pulls it over her head and eases the drawer shut again, before creeping back toward the door.

She shuts Roland away for his hopefully peaceful night's sleep, and lets herself indulge in tugging up the soft cotton of the v-neck she's pilfered until she can tuck her nose against it and breathe in the scent of it. Detergent, and fabric softener, and a disappointing lack of Robin, but she should have expected that – it's clean, after all.

Regina tells herself not to be so sentimental and heads for the stairs.

Tuck is now sprawled across a stretch of the foyer, but she finds Robin pretty much where she left him — only he's idly rolling the joint from finger to finger now, not an apparent care in the world.

Lucky bastard.

He glances up at Regina and smiles, and her stomach wrenches hard with nerves. Jesus, what is she she doing?

But when he lifts the joint with a questioning raise of his brows, holding it out slightly toward her and asking wordlessly whether she wants to try it or not… Regina gives him a nervous smile, and nods.

This is probably a mistake, but hell, apparently so is eating French toast in public, and quite frankly, there isn't a worse mistake to be made than the one her mother made all those years ago with her father, so fuck it.

She's going to smoke some pot with the neighbor and deal with the consequences later. At least it's not going to decimate her family, or scar her son for life.

Robin grins at her and brings the joint to his lips, holding it there as he swipes a zippo from the coffee table and uses it to relight the end of the joint. Regina settles onto the couch next to him, toeing her shoes off and curling her legs up, feeling very young, and silly, and just a little rebellious.

Mother would hate this – her smoking pot with the bartender she has the hots for. With a man who is so "beneath her."

But Mother is a vindictive cow, and she doesn't get to make any more damn decisions for Regina. So she watches Robin exhale a little stream of smoke, then takes the joint when he offers it to her, drawing in a deep breath and thinking, _Here goes nothing_.

She brings it to her lips and inhales – smoke hitting her throat and lungs almost immediately with a startling, burning sort of irritation that makes her cough. And cough. Her eyes water, and she gasps in a breath, holding the joint out for him and coughing one last, rattling time before she looks up at him and finds him suppressing a snicker as he watches her.

Embarrassment rushes up the back of her neck and she scowls at him. "Don't laugh at me," she croaks.

"I'm not," he insists, that dirty liar. "You're cute." (Regina rolls her eyes at him.) "I thought you said you'd had pot in college."

"I did," she tells him defensively, as he takes another draw on the joint (he makes it look so easy and… cough-free) and nods doubtfully.

"Did you forget how?" he teases through held breath, and then he blows out a much thicker stream of smoke than the last time.

"No," Regina tells him, before reluctantly admitting, "I've had brownies. I never smoked."

Robin chuckles, nodding again more earnestly, before telling her, "That surprises me – you opting for edibles over something that wasn't so… decadent."

"I'd hardly call what I've had decadent," she tells him, because college-aged men don't really make the best quality baked goods in her experience, "but… I was away from my mother. I was rebelling."

He passes her the joint again, urging, "Give it another try – go easy, inhale slowly, and if it catches just try to inhale past it."

Regina swallows heavily, her throat still feels a little scratchy, but she does as he says. Holds the joint between her lips and inhales slowly, feels that tickle and forces herself to breathe deeper, lower. She manages not to cough until she's drawn it away from her mouth, and even then it's just a little thing, a tiny, smoky cough before she exhales the rest.

"Better," Robin praises, and Regina smirks at him.

"I'm not so dumb," she tells him a little tartly – mostly teasing.

But Robin's hand falls on hers, squeezing lightly as he urges, "Look at me," and when she does, "You're not dumb. You just have virgin lungs, that's all."

Regina's lips curve slightly and she sits a little straighter, tries her best to look classy and sophisticated as she tells him, "I take very good care of myself."

Robin's gaze rakes over her now-totally-covered body and says, "Oh believe me, I notice."

"I've noticed," she taunts him, before taking another slow, careful drag on the joint. She doesn't cough at all this time, much to her pleasure.

For a minute, they just do this. Sit and banter, and pass the joint back and forth. It's nice. Easy. Comfortable.

She likes being with him – a little too much maybe, but isn't this exactly what Dr. Hopper said she shouldn't feel guilty about? Seeking comfort from someone who wants to give it? It _feels_ right – she knows it _isn't_ right, knows that she's a grenade, that someday this dance they're doing will end up exploding in their faces and leaving them with missing limbs and gaping holes where their hearts should be.

Someday, but not today, and today has been pretty terrible for her. So she's not going to worry about someday, she's just going to worry about right now. About tonight. She's going to do something dumb, because she can, because it feels good, feels right, and everything else about today has felt so gut-wrenchingly _wrong_.

"I'm going to kiss you in a minute," she tells him, because there's no use pretending otherwise. Robin looks over at her, his expression an adorable mix of confusion and amusement as she explains, "I'm telling you now, so you know that I made the decision before the pot kicked in."

He smiles at that, taking back the joint when she offers it, and saying, "Ah." And then, "I see. Another thirty-second friendly snog, then?"

Regina grins at the memory, shaking her head and muttering, "With the weekend I've had, I might need more than thirty seconds."

She watches him nod slowly as he takes a drag of the joint, watches the smoke leave his lips in a cloudy stream before he says, "We're alone. And getting… well, par-baked, I suppose. Tell me now where the line is, so I don't cross it."

God, she loves him — likes him. _Likes_ him, an awful lot. Likes the way he respects her. The way he doesn't want to hurt her.

And boundaries are probably a good idea, so she tells him, "No sex. And I don't really want to be naked in front of someone right now. Not today."

For a moment he just looks at her, a sort of appraising sideways glance that she can't quite read, but knows isn't judgement. And then he says, "I saw you this morning in that dress. If she had something to say about it other than how stunning you looked in it, I'll gladly fight whatever bullshit opinion she pushed on you."

Her lips curve again, softly this time, and grateful.

"I feel self-conscious sometimes after I've been with her. Days like this…" It's not just brunch. Not just Mother's words about her figure or her diet – it's the other thing, too. The blackmail, Mother using her, using her… body… as a threat, a weapon to keep Daddy's money.

She doesn't want this body today.

Robin's still waiting for her to finish her sentence, she realizes, and so she shakes her head a little, takes the joint back and watches the smoke curl off the end as she says, "I know you think I'm beautiful, and you'd probably even make me _feel_ beautiful. But I don't want to have to think about my body tonight, to remind myself that you like what you see, to… I just want to feel good for a little while. Relaxed, and… good."

And in the aim of feeling good, she takes another small puff off the joint. She doesn't cough this time either, just pulls a little of the smoke into her lungs and holds it there, lets it out slowly. She's starting to feel a little… something. Mellow. Very mellow, he was right.

She's breathing just fine, now, and her mind is starting to go quiet.

"Alright, then," he agrees. "Clothes on. But I'm going to say it, because I want you to hear it from me: You're gorgeous. And you look incredibly sexy in my shirt."

Regina laughs a little at that, dark eyes meeting blue, and he's smiling right back at her. She takes another puff off the joint and hands it back; it's nearly spent.

"I'm okay with wandering hands, just so we're clear," she tells him, and her eyelids are starting to feel a little heavy. Not sleepy, per se, she just feels… good. Relaxed. Oh hey, look at that, mission accomplished.

She barely notices Robin's little muttered, "Thank God," too distracted by the line of his jaw. She wants to lick it.

Oh, well, okay, then. She's probably high now, huh?

He was right, though. It's a good high. Not that she has much to compare it to, but she knows a _bad_ high.

"This one time," she tells him, "when I was in college… we were at this party, and I had a pot brownie. Well, half of one – I _did_ always worry they were a little too decadent, you're not wrong."

He's finished the joint now, and stubbed it out, is turning to prop his elbow on the back of the couch and listen to her.

"Anyway, they were really strong," she continues. "And I just remember that I was convinced I had tests the next day that I was going to fail. I was paranoid that I'd forgotten. I was freaking out; Daniel had to bring me home so I could study. Which I did, until the high started to wear off."

Robin snickers, shaking his head at her, biting his bottom lip.

"That wasn't good, that didn't feel good," she tells him, chuckling a little along with him. "But this is good."

"Good," he says, and then he teases her, "Most of us worry that the cops are about to bust up the party, or that one of our mates is doing us wrong. You worried about exams."

Regina lifts a brow and questions, "Are you surprised?"

"Not even a little bit," he answers, grinning.

She _Mmm_ s softly, shuts her eyes for a minute and just… is. Just enjoys being in a safe place, with a safe person, that she trusts.

And then her stomach growls. Loudly.

She opens her eyes again to find him looking at her quizzically, asking, "Did you eat dinner?"

"A little," she admits, "and then I threw it all up."

Robin frowns at that, reaching for her and insisting, "Come on. I'll make us something."

She takes his hand, and follows.

**.::.**

Something turns out to be grilled cheese sandwiches, that he preps while she leans against the counter and sips at a beer he's pulled out of the fridge for her.

Pot, hooking up with the bartender-slash-musician who lives next door, and now beer and grilled cheese. Mother would be growing prouder by the minute.

Regina takes a deep swig from her bottle in defiance.

Fuck Mother.

Fuck her and everything she stands for, and fuck all her games, and her manipulations, and her hard, dark heart. And everything she's ever said, or done, to hurt Regina, to hurt her father, to hurt—

This is not conducive to her mental state.

She can feel the anger trying to bubble up through the mellow, and she doesn't want that, so as she watches Robin slather a piece of Wonderbread with a criminal amount of butter, she confesses, "I'm thinking about my mother."

Robin looks up at her, squints for half a second and then says matter-of-factly, "Sometimes when you're not looking, I try to figure out if I can see your nipples through your top."

Regina snorts into a laugh, bending forward and gripping tightly to her beer as she's seized by the giggles, and when she straightens, he's grinning proudly at her.

"Not thinking about your Mum anymore, are you?" It's not really a question, and he's way too pleased with himself, tossing that buttered bread into a hot pan and layering it with an amount of cheese that she has to look away from.

"No, but I'm a little worried about my nipples showing through my clothes now," she laughs.

But he shakes his head, and assures her that, "Nah, I always strike out." And then he offers a cheeky grin and says, "But it's fun to try."

She snorts a little, and says, "Good. I didn't think they were _that_ dark."

Robin chuckles softly and leans over, presses a kiss to her lips that's easy as breathing, soft and sweet, and it doesn't occur to her that they don't do this every day until at least the third soft peck.

And then he's pulling back before she can remember to savor it, teasing her with, "Why don't you show me, and we can make sure."

Regina laughs, shaking her head and reminding, "Clothes on."

Robin bites that bottom lip again and shrugs, tells her, "Worth a shot," and then turns back to his cooking.

Regina sips her beer, and watches him.

"You need to turn that burner down. You're going to burn your bread before that cheese melts," she informs, a little haughtily, maybe, but she's right. She doesn't do grilled cheese often, but she does it damn well. Quality bread, and good cheese, usually something else to liven it up a bit. She makes a mean mozzarella-pesto grilled cheese, and a brie and fig one that she likes to indulge in every now and then. She could grilled cheese this man under the table.

That doesn't make any sense… does it?

"Don't tell me how to make a cheese toastie," Robin retorts with mock-offense. "I've made many a cheese toastie in my day, and very often after a bit of weed. I know what I'm doing."

Regina's brows lift, and she lets out a doubtful, "Mmhmm."

And then he grimaces a little and admits, "I usually make it under the broiler, but someone lost the bloody tray, so stovetop it is."

"'I know what I'm doing,'" she mocks, and then suggests, "Cover the pan with a lid after you flip it; it'll trap some of the heat in and help it melt. And turn the flame down a little, so the bread toasts more slowly and the cheese has more time to cook."

"Bossy," he teases her, but he does turn the flame down a little, and bends to look for a lid in one of the lower cabinets.

Regina tilts her head slightly to admire the view. It would be better in jeans than the loose-fitting sweats he's currently wearing, but still, "You have a great ass."

Robin stills, then turns back to her with a devilish, shit-eating sort of grin, and she realizes she actually said that _out loud._

Oops. But not really oops, because it's true, isn't it? He just admitted to staring at her breasts when she's not paying attention; no reason to pretend she wasn't checking out his ass.

"Well, then that makes two of us," he teases, plopping that lid on the grilled cheese and telling her, "I quite like your candor after a bit of a smoke."

"Mm," she hums. "I'm not sure if it's candor so much as a lack of filter, but I'm glad you're enjoying it."

"I am, very much. Makes me want to be all sorts of honest, too."

Regina gestures encouragingly with her beer, and says, "By all means. It's Be Brutally Honest with Regina Day, apparently, and least I know _you_ won't say something that makes me hate myself."

He frowns a little at that, and asks, "Did you want to talk about what—"

"Not even a little bit," she assures him. She wants to forget. Not talk. "Be honest with me."

Robin looks at her for another moment, then nods, and says, "It is my most fervent dream to see your naked arse."

Regina laughs – cackles really – and Robin is still talking, telling her, "I mean it. I have dreamt of it, many, many times. I have jerked off to it many, many times. Every time you wear those bloody shorts, or those skirts, or leggings, or really, just anything at all. Your ass is exceptional, love."

Regina snickers again, a giddy sort of lightness propelling her to absolute insanity – which apparently looks like setting her beer on the counter and turning so she's facing away from him, hooking her thumbs into the waistband of her leggings, her heart starting to pound as she readies herself to make his most fervent dream come true.

And then she catches sight of a stack of mail on the countertop, JOHN LITTLE emblazoned on the address line of the top envelope, and she pauses, looking back at Robin over her shoulder. "Where's John?"

The last thing she needs is to have his roommate walk in on her bareassed in the kitchen. He already knows too much about their last little indiscretion here.

Robin's gaze is glued to her ass, and he murmurs, "On a business trip; please continue. I beg of you."

Regina grins, and tugs the waistband of her leggings down to flash her ass at him before tugging them back up with a giggle.

But Robin whines and tells her, "T-shirt. I couldn't see—"

"Oh," she frowns. Well that just ruined the whole spontaneous thing, didn't it?

She reaches for the bottom hem of the shirt and twists it up, knotting it haphazardly near her navel.

This time when she moons him, she feels just a little bolder, wiggles her naked ass a little at him before she tugs the spandex back up to her waist, Robin's thickly groaned, "Christ alive," making it entirely worth it.

She's starts to turn, but his hands are on her hips suddenly, gripping there for a moment before he turns her in his grasp and hoists her up onto the countertop. She narrowly misses knocking over her beer, and barely has time for a pleasantly surprised "Mm!" before his mouth is on hers.

It's a _good_ kiss, and this one she takes the time to savor. She wraps her arms around his shoulders, her legs around his waist, tangles fingers into his hair and devours him like the fucking French toast she wasn't fucking allowed to have. Robin's hands slide down to grope at her ass (no surprise there), and he draws out of the kiss with a nipping pull at her bottom lip, murmuring, "You are so incredibly sexy, I hope you know that," before diving back in for more.

She doesn't know that, not lately anyway, but right now? Right now she feels it. Feels floaty and present and pleasantly dizzy, and yes, very sexy, especially when he squeezes her ass and groans into her mouth, tugging her more tightly against where he's starting to stiffen in his sweats.

She's going to have an orgasm tonight. She's deciding it right now. She feels good instead of feeling like refried crap, and she wants to _keep_ feeling good, and she's stoned, so hell, she can blame the pot tomorrow. But she's going to get this man to give her one of those shaky-kneed orgasms like the last time before she walks out of his door and back to real life.

For now, though, she's just going to sit here on his kitchen counter and make out with him, and enjoy the way she starts to throb and slicken as he maps the terrain of her neck with his tongue.

There are noises that she's making, she can _hear_ them, but she doesn't quite believe they're coming from her. They're too throaty and desperate to be her, but she's the only woman here and Robin's mouth is busy, so they must be her. It must be her, " _Unh,_ Robin, God!" and her "Mmnah!" and her "Ohh…"

They're a little too pornographic for someone only kissing her neck, but she really _likes_ having her neck kissed, and apparently likes it even more so when she's a bit stoned, and is something burning?

Regina opens her eyes, and the first thing she sees is the ceiling. She tips her head forward and the next thing she sees is Tuck sitting on his rump across the kitchen, watching them with his head cocked a little and one ear perked up. Little perv.

But neither ceiling or dog are burning, and it takes her a moment to realize what is:

"Shit, the food is burning," she gasps.

Robin pauses, his breath washing over her neck in heavy, tickling whooshes, and then he presses a kiss to the spot where her neck meets her shoulder, and mutters, "Fuck. You need to eat."

"It can wait," she insists, moving to pull him back in, but he reaches for her hands, lifts them to his lips and presses a kiss to her knuckles before he insists that, no, it can't.

"Food first," he tells her, "And then I'll snog you silly again. You and that glorious rear end of yours."

She pouts and he drops his hands to rub down her thighs, taking a step back as she reluctantly disentangles herself.

When he pulls the cover off the pan, the burning smell gets stronger, and the grilled cheese he moves from pan to plate is a bit… blackened on the bottom. He starts a fresh one cooking, then attempts to scrape some of the char away with a butter knife, before giving up and just biting into it anyway.

He deems it, "Not that bad, really. Bit burnt, but it's cheesy and toasty."

Still, she opts to wait for the next one.

**.::.**

Robin considers it a small victory that he's managed to draw her from a woman in the midst of some sort of panic attack to a woman who pounds down not one cheese toastie, but two— _and_ a bottle and a half of beer. Not to mention that she's gone all affectionate and sassy, mooning him and kissing him and bumping up against him while he'd cooked, stealing bites of his blackened grilled cheese and wrinkling her nose adorably at the burnt taste of it.

It had been all he could do to keep his hands off her long enough to see to it that she ate a proper dinner, but now she's done so, and he's free to touch and kiss and roam.

They're on the sofa again, Regina on her back beneath him, trading slow, steamy kisses as their hips rock and press together. She tastes like bitter beer and salty cheese, and she feels like a dream come bloody true as she coasts her fingertips up and down his back again and again and again.

And then she falters a little in the kiss, turning her head suddenly and lifting a fist to her lips before she let out a low little burp.

Robin snickers at her and her cheeks pinken a bit (or maybe she's just flushed from the eager making out, it's hard to truly tell).

"It's the beer," she tells him sheepishly. "The bubbles."

"Mm," he hums, planting kisses along her neck, dotting them along the edge of her collar.

"I'm so stuffed," she admits with a little groan, and a little laugh.

Robin takes pity on her (and continues his own enjoyment) by scooting down a bit so his torso isn't pressed into her full belly. He's cradled between her spread thighs now, one of her ankles hooking around his waist as he trails kisses over the soft cotton of her borrowed shirt, cresting the swell of one cloth-covered breast and making his way down the other side.

When he nears her actual stomach, though, he finds himself with slim fingers tangled in his hair, clutching to stop his descent.

He looks up at her with what feels like a rather goofy smile and asks, "Too full?"

Regina looks a little sheepish and admits, "I think I have a grilled cheese baby. I'm all bloated."

"I suppose that was rather more butter and cheese than your poor belly is used to."

Regina frowns at that and says, "It's a stomach, not a belly." She taps gently below her navel and says, " _This_ is a belly."

"Semantics," he insists, because it's all one and the same isn't it? Tit to clit, it's all belly.

"Not semantics," she tells him, smoothing her palms over the fabric between them (she'd pulled out that little knot before they'd made it to the couch) as he levers up a bit more fully onto his elbows. "My stomach is where I digest food. My belly is where I have this stubborn little curve."

He frowns down at her, trying to figure out just what she's talking about, his own hand following the path hers had taken. Sure enough, there's a subtle little roundness below her navel, but it's firm muscle beneath his palm, so he looks up at her and says, "I'm fairly certain that's called a uterus."

Regina snorts softly and tells him, "Yes, well, he's eleven."

"It's still in there, though, isn't it?" he challenges. It's not baby fat she's fretting over, it's just body. A barely-there womanly curve that he itches to press a kiss to. But she's clearly self conscious about it, so he quells the urge.

"Yes, but…" She concedes, frowning and offering a dissatisfied, "It could be flatter. I do a lot of cardio, but I'm a little lax on strength and core." She gives the t-shirt a little tug so it's not pulled so tightly across her belly, the looser fabric bunching a little and disguising her nonexistent flaw. "When I was fifteen, I could do four hundred crunches a day."

She says it with a tone he can't quite read – there's a challenge to it, a bite, and maybe a bit of pride, and something else he can't place. He'd maybe work harder to figure it out if his eyebrows weren't rising to his hairline in surprise.

"Four hun—Were you _concave_ when you were fifteen?" he asks her, a bit floored. At fifteen, he was a slightly scrawny thing more worried about hiding spliffs in his uniform and not getting caught lighting them up in the back of the schoolyard than doing enough crunches to make his eyes cross.

"I…" She looks down, away, doesn't meet his gaze as she says, "Yes, actually. I was… a skinny kid."

He's hit a nerve. Fuck.

"Well, with four hundred crunches a day, you'd have to be," he murmurs warmly, swirling soothing fingers over her belly (no, her stomach) as he asks, "Why are you so hard on yourself?"

She looks at him then. Raises her brows and asks dryly, "Have you met my mother?"

"Your mother's not here."

Her expression goes pained, pinched, her voice softening a little as she admits, "She's always here. In my head. She planted herself here, a toxic, well-tended garden of 'Too fat, too much, too many calories, too much sugar. Run a little longer, you're pooching at the hips. Only you could diet yourself into the hospital, Regina, you're always so dramatic.'"

He blinks at that, her bitterly bitten words locking together like pieces in a puzzle he hadn't even realized she'd been assembling for him (he wonders whether she's noticed it). They slot in next to _I can't eat this pizza tonight,_ and picking all the skin off her white-meat-only fried chicken, and hesitating to grab a beer in his kitchen, and running at four AM, and four hundred crunches a day when she was fifteen, and _oh_.

Oh.

Nobody just diets themselves into the hospital. That is not a _diet._

That's something more.

Regina is still talking, still rattling off a litany of her mother's poison: "'Therapy at your age, I thought you'd grown out of that, Regina. When are you going to stop being so _sensitive_? Honestly, Regina. Do you really think you _deserve_ dessert after how you've behaved, Regina?'"

"Tell her to shut up," he mutters darkly, hating her mother even more than he already had – and he hadn't been sure that was possible.

"It's not that simple," she sighs wearily. "I'm not that simple."

"No, nothing about you is _simple,_ " Robin agrees, giving in to the urge to press that kiss to her belly. He rests his chin there gently, looks up at her and says, "You're brilliant."

She melts a little, her lips curving, her fingers scratching swirls against his scalp as she tells him, "I wish I could see me the way you do."

"Me too."

He presses another kiss to her belly, and makes himself a promise: he's going to pull up every poisonous weed Cora Mills planted in her by the roots. Yank out every insecurity, and replace it with a little seed of compliment until she doesn't look at her body and see a mess of flaws.

Whatever they are to each other, he's going to make sure she knows how beautiful she is, how wonderful, he's going to tend his own bloody garden of 'eyes I could drown in,' and 'lips I can't get enough of' and 'that smile I think about every time I close my eyes,' and that arse he could take a bite out of it was so round and tempting, and 'eat a bloody cookie, you deserve it,' and 'do you have any idea, any at all, how criminally sexy you are?' He'll make a second job out of making sure that she knows how fucking _valued_ she is, even if they never become anything more than good friends who occasionally fall prey to delightfully enjoyable lapses of judgment like this one.

And he's going to start working at it right now.

He tugs a little at that t-shirt she's wearing, and muses, "How is it that i can wear this t-shirt every day, and look like nothing special, but you put it on for an hour, and look like sex on a stick?"

Regina smirks, and rolls her eyes. The smirk lingers, though, spreads into a smile.

He landed that one quite well.

"I highly doubt that," she tells him, her thumb coasting down along his jaw until he turns to press a kiss to it.

"I mean it," he assures. "I want to do all sorts of naughty things to you right now. Your no nudity rule is not doing anything to suppress my libido."

She grins at him, her nose scrunching adorably, and then her hand falls to his shoulder, squeezing, bunching his shirt as she urges, "Come up here and do them, then." She sobers, and holds up a finger, reminding, "No sex."

"I remember," he assures, pressing a kiss to that fingertip, and then nipping it, sucking it between his lips and swirling his tongue around it. Her eyes darken and heat, his teeth scraping lightly at the pad of her fingertip as he draws back. "What _do_ you want, babe?"

"You, shirtless, and kissing me," she answers, and he grins, moves back to his knees and tugs his shirt up and off.

"I see the no nudity rule doesn't extend to me," he teases, dropping his shirt to the floor and looking down at her. She's a little half-lidded, still, from the weed, but she's staring at his chest, her tongue peeking out to wet her lips as she murmurs a pleased _Definitely not_ that makes him feel particularly good about himself. At least he's not the only one here who can't get enough of the other.

One of her hands rises, her nails raking lightly up from the waist of his sweats past his navel, making goosebumps bloom over his skin and his cock twitch. He'd been hard before, but it had deflated slightly as they'd been talking. But now, with her urging him to, "Come back down here, I want all this pressed up against me," it's starting to come back.

Robin complies eagerly, situating himself just so atop her, his hips notched in with hers, his nose bumping against hers as he drops a peck to her lips. "How's that buzz holding up?" he asks, and she smiles a little dopily, her brows wiggling.

"I feel really good," she tells him. "Mellow. My brain's a little fuzzy, but in a good way."

"Mm," he hums, pressing little kisses along her jaw now. "Good. Why don't we work on making it even fuzzier?"

She giggles beneath him (he rather likes the way pot makes her so _giggly_ ), and says that sounds like a great idea, her arms wrapping around torso with a little moan as she presses her hips up to grind against his.

Robin grinds down into her in response, and they set up a lazy, firm rhythm. His rapidly hardening cock rubbing against her in a way that makes her huff and moan, their mouths meeting again, again, savoring, indulging. It's incredibly hot, this lazy enjoyment of each other, and he hopes to God she doesn't regret it when she sobers up, because he sure as hell won't.

One of his hands finds its way to her tits, squeezing and groping, his thumb rubbing over her and discovering the bump of a firm nipple. He groans, strokes his thumb against her and wishes she was more sensitive here because he desperately wants to spend a good long while on her tits. Wants to kiss and lick and suck – and then he reminds himself that he can't take her shirt off, so it's probably just as well.

Still, he can't fight the urge to scoot down a little, pressing kisses to her neck, her collar, the cotton-covered rise of her chest. He just wants to give that pert nipple a little nip of appreciation, and he does, a teasing little bite through a layer of cotton and lycra. And he means to kiss his way right back up, but she gasps and arches her chest toward him.

Robin glances up at her and asks, "Was that good?"

Regina's eyes are closed, her lips pressed together, but she nods, so he does it again. A blunted bite that draws an, "Ohhh…" out of her, and, "Keep doing that…"

He's not sure if it's the pot or the pressure that he her lighting up a bit more than usual, but he's not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He tugs the t-shirt taut across her tits and then treats both nipples to little teasing bites in turn, switching from one to the other, back and forth until she's writhing and moaning and pressing her hips up against his waist.

He's stone hard now, from the sound of her, the feel of her, and he has to have her lips again. Has to kiss his way back up and claim them, their hips grinding together again with twin satisfied groans as he murmurs, "You're so gorgeous like this."

She _Mmm_ s against his lips, then manages a breathless, "Robin, I need to come," between kisses.

He pauses, presses his brow to hers and murmurs, " _Fuck_."

He wants her to say that again.

"Wanna make you come," he murmurs, digging his hips down harder into hers on the next grind and enjoying the way she tips her head back and gasps for him.

"God, keep – mm! – keep talking to me," she moans his hands grasping at his hips, groping at his ass, and fuck, God, he bucks slightly into her when she gives him a good squeeze.

He sucks his way along her jaw and asks, "Talking to you?"

She _Mmhmm_ s and then gasps, "Wanna hear your – oh! – voice when I— mm!"

"Yeah?" He keeps his voice low, mutters into her ear as his hips push and push against her. "You like my voice?" ( _Yes!_ ) "Mm, love hearing you too, love… every gasp… every—yes, just like that, babe, love hearing how good I make you feel…" Every breath is a gasping little moan now, nails scraping up and biting into his shoulders as she jerks, arches, but she's not quite there. Robin buries his fingers in her hair, cups her head up, their cheeks brushing as he tries to think straight enough to talk her over the edge. "Can you feel how – oh, love – can you feel how hard I am for you?"

She hisses a, "Yesss," then lets out this little whine that goes straight to his cock, her voice thick as she moans, "Want you."

"I know, babe, I know, I want you too, want to sink right down into you and feel how – _mm_ – wet you are right now. Are you wet for—"

The "Uh huh" is out of her mouth before he even finishes his question, desperate and rough, and then she's letting out another high moan, planting her feet into the couch cushion and pressing up harder against him. "Please, I—"

"I've got you, love," he assures, one hand moving down to palm her thigh as he tries to focus his thrusts against her in the way that had her gasping before. "Let go for me, I've got you…"

But she doesn't. She rocks and grinds, and digs her nails into his bicep and keeps letting out these little sounds of pleasure, but they grow increasingly desperate and frustrated, no matter his utterances of how much he wants her, how good she feels, sounds, smells.

And then she goes limp for a second, rakes one hand through her hair with a little growl of frustration and half-whines, "I can't—" and Robin feels like an arse. She needs this tonight, and he is not delivering. (In his defense, he did get her stoned, which is likely not helping her get there…)

"Pot's a depressant," he mutters. "Let me…" He eases back from her a little, until he can work a hand down between them, down into her leggings, and he's hardly asked, "Is this alright?" before she's nodding eagerly and gasping _Please_.

So Robin keeps going, slips his fingers further, burrows them in against bare skin and he can _feel_ how close she is, all slick and swollen and sensitive as his fingers skim over her clit. He sinks two into her effortlessly, pleased when she moans and nods, murmuring, "Christ, love, you're soaked," but her leggings are tight and he can't move too terribly well with the band pressed into his wrist the way it is. He presses a kiss to her cheek and asks, "Can these come off, love?"

He's a little bit surprised that she nods, less surprised that she gives his chest a little push and reaches for her waistband herself. Robin slips his fingers out, and moves back so she can wriggle out of them. They end up on the floor with his discarded t-shirt, and he ends up pressed in alongside her, nipping her earlobe and telling her, "You have great legs, you know that?" as he slides his hand back down.

She bites her lip, and nods, parts her thighs for him, and lets him sink two fingers back into her soaked heat. Christ, she's so ready to come, he can _feel_ it. He'd meant what he said, he wants desperately to sink his cock in her and fuck her down into these cushions until she screams for him. Someday (probably not, but he can dream).

"How's that, babe?"

Her brow scrunches before she lets out a whispered, "More…"

"More?" he asks, and she swallows thickly, and nods, so he eases ring and middle out, sinks pointer and middle in and then out again and all three together as her jaw drops open.

"Like that?"

"Uh huh," she breathes, and then, "Oh, that's good, so good…" still needy and tense, one hand fisting against the cushions, the other tangling in his hair as he works his fingers inside her, testing depth and angle until she lets out a deep, throaty moan.

"Right there?" he asks her, and she nods, gasps, _Yeah_. "Quick or slow, love?"

She asks for quick, and he doesn't waste a moment, doesn't want to risk her losing any of that edge she's been riding. He fucks her hard, quick, fingers pounding into her, palm smacking against her clit every time, just the way she'd come for him the last time all those weeks ago. She tenses and cries out, squeezes her eyes shut and nods frantically.

"Come for me, babe," he urges. "Want to watch you come again, you've no idea how many times I've pictured the last time."

Her "M-Me too-ooh!" is shaky and tense, she's trying so hard to make this happen that he worries she's getting in her own way.

"Think of it every time I jerk off," he murmurs, dropping a warm kiss below her ear, trying to work her up even more with, "You were so sexy, love, so gorgeous, show me again."

She cries his name, a strangled, drawn out, "Robinnnn," her body tensing, tensing but not breaking. Her face screws up, nose scrunching, brow furrowing, but it's effort, not pleasure, and she whispers a near-silent, "Please…"

"Come on, love," he breathes to her. "Push it all away, it's just us. Just you, and me, and my fingers inside you and how hard I'm about to make you come."

Her breath is quick and short, and she nods, nods again.

"Focus on my fingers, love, nothing else, just feel me, feel me fucking you, good and hard, hmm, just like you need, just right to make you come, yeah?"

Her face melts a little as he talks, some of the wrinkles smoothing out, her jaw dropping open slightly, and she's quaking but some of the tension has softened from of her.

"That's it," he urges, "Just feel, just enjoy it, love, just let it come, let yourself come, you deserve it, hmm? Deserve to come hard after the day you've had…"

The next moan squeaks out of her, her fingers grasping restlessly at the couch cushion again, and her thighs fall open a little wider for him, her wetness feeling snugger, hotter as he keeps up his pace. But it doesn't seem to be quite _enough,_ and he will not fail at this task, Goddamnit, he's going to make her come til she's hoarse if it kills him.

Her head tips toward him, mouth opening for a kiss, and he indulges. Pauses his hand for a moment to do it (to give his arm a rest for a hot second, too, grinding his palm slow and hard against her, rocking his fingers in deep as he does), the kiss wet and warm. She's panting when it breaks, murmurs, "I need…"

"What?" he urges, with another lazy rock. "What do you need, love?"

Her brow pinches again, but his next slow push has her gasping softly, her, "I don't—" broken off into "mmm" with the next and Robin wonders if maybe they're going about this all wrong.

He nuzzles into her hair, his voice low and velvety when he murmurs, "Regina, love, rub your clit for me…"

It takes a moment, but he feels her fingertips slide under his palm, feels them start to move in little circles as he keeps up the slow, deep thrusts. Her next gasp has an edge of surprise to it, and his next push makes her neck arch again.

"Is this what you need, love? Deep and slow?"

Her only answer is a breathy sort of "Haaa…" but she's starting to lose that look of frustration, her jaw loosening, trembling a little.

"That's it," he coaxes, "Let go," and "Just feel, love…"

Her breath goes deeper, deeper, his name spilling from her, a surprised, breathless, "Robin!"

"I know, love, I see it," he murmurs, lips peppering kisses along her jaw. The slower pace means he can _feel_ everything more clearly, the slick, slippery slide of her, and the way everything starts to clench just a little. "You're so beautiful right now, so gorgeous right before you—"

Orgasm rolls through her in a gasping wave, her back arching, her forehead tilting toward his and pressing as she moans softly. She's too close to watch, so he has to settle for listening, closes his eyes and murmurs more encouragements, and takes in every trembling, shuddering sound, and then she's gasping, pleading, "Don't stop! Don't st—oh! _Mm!_ "

"You want me to keep going?" he rasps, biting gently at her earlobe and keeping up the pace of his hand. She nods on a throaty _Uh huh,_ so Robin ignores the beginnings of a cramp in his arm and gives her what she needs. Pushes into her again, and again, grinds his palm against the back of her hand when he realizes she's stopped rubbing herself (she squeezes around his fingers at the grinding pressure on her clit).

Her neck arches back, digging into the sofa cushion, and he can see again, can watch her lashes flutter, and her lower lip tremble, her mouth open in a loose O. God, she's so bloody gorgeous when she comes. She's slipping off the edge now, settling into that place in between orgasms, her eyes still shut tight against the pleasure he hasn't let abate, her brow pinched with it, but she's gone from moaning to panting, her fingers grasping at his elbow but not gripping hard.

His arm is really starting to cramp. Fuck.

He needs just a moment to shake it out, but he wants to make her come again. Wants to give her one more if he can, and bliss her out completely.

Reluctantly, he lets his fingers slip from her (she whines softly and he presses a kiss to the apple of her cheek), urging, "Rub your clit for a minute, babe, I just need to stretch my arm."

Her eyes are still clenched tight, but she nods and bites her lip as she rubs herself again. Robin stretches his arm, gives it a little shake, rolls his wrist and watches the way she inhales sharply at her own touch.

Good, good, she's still maintaining that edge.

He can still feel a little bit of tension in his muscle when he slips his hand back down and slides two fingers inside her – he's not going to be able to work another orgasm out of her slowly without it cramping again. So he decides to go for broke.

Robin crooks his fingers just so and rubs them hard and quick inside of her, grinning when the sudden, intense stimulation makes her shout and arch.

"Good?" he checks, and she nods frantically, lets out this painfully sexy little whine and grips hard at the sofa cushion. "Are you gonna come again, babe?"

She just sucks in a few frantic breaths, lets out an "Ahhh!" that makes his cock throb because _he_ drew that bloody fantastic sound out of her. But she doesn't give any indication that she'd like him to stop, so he keeps it up, glances down in time to see her thighs start to quake, to watch her hand grasp frantically at his thigh and fist in his sweats, and then she's gasping a tight, "Don't—st—op!" and coming again with a harsh cry.

It's loud, and she clamps tight around his fingers, but he's not stopping until she makes him. It occurs to him in a flash of sudden awareness that his son is asleep upstairs, so he covers her mouth with his and muffles her cries. They vibrate against his lips, desperate and throaty, and then her mouth pops open with another high "Ah!" and one of her hands grips tightly as his wrist, nails digging in as she breathes, "Sto—" and breaks off into a gasp.

Robin stills, and she goes boneless against the couch with a sigh of what he hopes is satisfied relief, her cunt still clenching slightly around his snug fingers.

His arm aches, but not nearly as much as his cock does. It's hard, needy, watching her come not only once, but twice, has him solid as stone where he's pressed to her thigh.

But her lashes have fallen shut, her face slack and peaceful as she sighs and drops one hand heavily to the cushion above her head. She's not anxious anymore, he's pretty damn certain of that. Not overthinking either – not likely thinking much at all.

He doesn't want to interrupt her hard-earned afterglow with a selfishly prodding cock, so he'll just… he'll just have to wait and hope she's not about to tug her pants up and run out on him, modesty returning in full force.

In the meantime, he shifts just slightly to earn a little friction against where he needs it most, disguising it by drawing his fingers slowly out of her.

She's still basking, so Robin doesn't hesitate in lifting them to his mouth to suck her off of him, moaning softly as he finally gets another taste of her.

God, he should have gone down on her, buried his tongue inside her and drunk straight from the well.

 _Next time_ , he thinks – and then he reminds himself that there may not _be_ a next time, and decides to savor this one while he's got it.

**.::.**

She's enjoying the pleasant rush of blood through her veins when she hears him let out a quiet groan, and she lets her eyes slit open just in time to catch him sucking her wetness off his middle finger. Regina feels herself blush under the already pink flush of her cheeks, self-consciousness trying to put down roots in her belly, but the soil there is so saturated with pleasure that it dies off quickly.

He catches her watching and gives her a cheeky, "Delicious."

Regina bites down on her lower lip and laughs softly.

He wants her, she knows he does, the evidence of it is undeniably pressed against her hip. A part of her wants to do things that are terribly reckless, wants to feel the thick length of him slide into her, pin her against this couch and fuck down into her until she sees stars again (she feels herself clench at the thought and forces a deep, slow breath to rein in her raging hormones).

She has enough presence of mind to know that she shouldn't be making a decision like that while stoned, fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it). Instead, she brings a heavy hand to comb through the hair at his temple, draws him down into a warm, lazy kiss that tastes vaguely of her, and then tells him softly, sincerely, "Thank you."

Robin swallows thickly, but she sees a flicker of disappointment beneath his soft expression. He pecks a kiss to her lips and shifts to settle between her and the back of the sofa with a grunt. His arm drapes over her middle, and she presses into his warmth, shivering once as the light sheen of sweat over her skin begins to cool. Their legs weave, and his arm ends up underneath her head as he holds her close and presses a kiss into her hair.

"How do you feel now?" he asks, still using that bedroom voice that goes straight to her clit.

She hums softly, tells him, " _Good_. Relaxed. A little sleepy, and very fuzzy."

He huffs a little laugh against her hair.

You could house a troupe of Boy Scouts under the tent in his sweats.

She's not quite sure what kind of self-sacrificial heroism he's going for here when he rubs her shoulder and tells her, "Job well done, then," and, "Close your eyes, love; take advantage," like she's not about to return the favor.

"I can't," she reminds. "I need to get back to Henry soon, and if I fall asleep now, I'll probably stay here. Bareassed on your sofa."

Robin snorts his amusement, and squeezes her closer, murmuring, "Fine by me," into her hair.

"I bet," she chuckles, as she lets her hand skim down his bare belly (very much enjoys the feel of his torso beneath her fingertips), and coasts her palm over the length of him. Robin tenses and inhales deeply, and drops a hand to cover hers.

"S'alright, babe," he dismisses. "Tonight was for you. I can wait til after you head home, and jerk off to what we just did. You enjoy your endorphins for a few minutes."

"Robin, this thing could cut glass," she argues, lifting her head, and he snorts a little at her.

"I'll live," he assures, lifting his hand from her shoulder to tuck a lock of hair back behind her ear. "I don't want you to lose out on relaxed and fuzzy. It was the whole point, yeah?"

"The point was for me to quiet my brain for a while, and we did," Regina tells him, leaning in to press her own kisses over his neck, his jaw, working her way to his ear and playing her trump card: "Now let me suck you off."

He inhales again, deep and quick, and exhales a little groan that makes her smile. Before he can argue with her again, she gives him a slow stroke, does not miss the way he presses into it just a little bit, a reflex he can't quite fight.

"You're not going to take long," she reasons, rubbing her thumb up over the tip of him, the cotton a little damp over his head. She gives him a cheeky smile and adds, "I'll still have all those endorphins in five minutes."

She watches indecision eat at him, his teeth clamping onto his bottom lip, his eyelids fluttering oh-so-subtly as she rubs the head of his cock again with her thumb. He swallows heavily, and just when she thinks she's going to have to sweet talk him some more, he nods.

Good.

She has half a mind to preserve her own post-coital buzz and try not to draw this out, but she also has a very acute desire to taste a line down the center of his chest and belly, and they probably shouldn't do this again, no matter how "healthy" Archie thinks it is, so she indulges. Forces sleepy limbs to obey until she can plant a wet kiss in the middle of his sternum, another one a few inches lower, a swirl of her tongue another few inches below that, thoroughly enjoying the way his belly expands and contracts with thickening breaths the further down she goes. And then she meets the elastic of his waistband and grasps it, giving it a little tug until he lifts his hips and gives a little wriggle to help draw his pants down to his thighs.

His cock is incredibly hard, the skin velvety smooth and hot as she wraps her fingers around him, lets her thumb idly trace a throbbing vein. Robin moans, and it thrills her. She knows that there are very real reasons why this is not something she should be doing, but right now she's deciding to focus on other things. Like the importance of fairness, and turnabout, and the way his foreskin is slick with precum.

She shifts a little, gives him another stroke and spreads all that slippery wetness around the tip of him again, and then she glances up to make sure he's watching as she bends in and swirls her tongue over him. He is, but only for a second before his head drops back on a groan, his cock twitching slightly.

He breathes, "Regina," and she intensely regrets that he's so close and this will be so short.

But he _is_ close, and it's late, and that afterglow haze will not last indefinitely, so she doesn't tease. Swirls her tongue around his head again, once more, and then wraps her lips around him and sucks in half of him.

Robin's hands find her hair immediately, fingers tangling loosely into it, quiet grunts and moans sounding as she bobs her head up and down, slowly at first, slicking him up, taking him deeper, sucking a little harder, a little more.

He _Mmm!_ s, hips jerking, fingers clenching, and then she draws back, back, sucks hard as she goes and enjoys the desperate little noise he makes, keeps sucking until her lips have closed around him, until his foreskin slips from her lips. Robin's breath rushes out in an exhale, his Adam's apple bobs, and she tells him, "Watch me."

Regina hears his whispered, "Christ," and then he's bending one elbow and drawing it up behind his head, propping it up so he can see better, and she smirks, and sucks him in again, works him over, swirls her tongue, wraps her grip around the base of his cock and covers what her mouth doesn't quite reach with lazy, corkscrewing strokes.

She enjoys immensely the way he curses softly, and then murmurs, "God, fuck, I've wanted this for— oh, babe, just like—oh— _fuck, Regina—_ "

She chuckles around her significant mouthful, draws back and runs her tongue beneath his foreskin, runs her hand up and eases it back gently, testing, but it slides back with almost no coaxing and then she's free to give a firm, flat lick to the bare head of him and enjoy the way he chokes and fists the cushions.

"Again!" he gasps, and she does, again, again, his thighs clenching, his hips jerking, and he makes this _sound_ , this sort of desperate whimper that makes her feel like she's won the damn lottery.

He's gasping around his, "Love — suck — please—" and who is she to deny him after she's come over on short notice, in the middle of a panic attack, and he's let her cry on him, and jerk him around yet again, smoke his pot and indulge in something they both know will be temporary and selfish.

He has earned every (she hopes) lovely minute of this blowjob, and if he wants her to suck his cock some more, then so be it. She switches back to what she'd been doing before, bobbing her head up and down, sucking firmly, skims her fingers down the length of him until she can cup his balls in her palm, and he _must_ be close, must be ridiculously close, because they're tight and firm and he groans when she kneads them gently, groans again a little more desperately when that hand slides back up and wraps around him again.

And then it's, "Regina, love – babe, I'm – I'm gonna – Fuck, love, I'mgonnacome!"

His hips are squirming, twitching, and she doesn't let up, just moans her permission, sucks harder, rubs him faster until her mouth fills with the salty taste of him as he gasps and groans above her, his fingers restless in her hair again.

Swallowing is not her favorite thing—cum isn't exactly a dessert topping—but she powers through every last little spurt of it and then draws back and forces herself to swallow it down. She wipes at the little drop that had escaped her as she crawls back up his body, and then she kisses him immediately. Deeply. With tongue.

She feels his grimace, hears his little protesting "Mm!" and then cuddles herself down onto his shoulder with a declaration of, "If I have to taste it, so do you."

"You didn't have to swallow it," he grumbles, and she smirks, shutting her eyes and letting herself savor the still-pleasant feel of her post-orgasmic limbs.

"Mm. Less messy," she sighs, her fingertips swirling lazily against his chest. Her high is wearing off, she thinks, but it's still there enough that she finds herself very much enjoying the simple feel of his skin beneath her fingertips, the tickle of the smattering of hairs there.

His nose presses into her hair again, and he murmurs a quiet, "You still relaxed?"

"Mmhmm. Very." Regina tips her head up and asks, "You?"

"God, yes," he sighs in a way that makes her giggle. She needs to stop that – she's not a giggler.

It's an unwelcome thought, a little moment of self-criticism that makes her realize that, yes, her high probably _is_ wearing off.

She sighs again, a little more heavily, and tells him, "I should get home to Henry… I've been gone a long time."

Robin's fingers comb through her hair, as he excuses, "You needed some time to settle down."

He has no idea.

She frowns a little, then levers herself up enough to look down at him. "Thank you. For tonight. I really, really needed this."

One corner of his smile curls up, and he lifts a hand to tuck her hair back behind her ear again, telling her, "I'm always here when you need. When she twists you all up… just call."

She shouldn't. They shouldn't.

Fuck.

 _Fuck_ , what is she doing? What are _they_ doing? They shouldn't be doing this…

"Stop thinking," he tells her, and she flushes and wishes she wasn't so transparent. She isn't, usually, but it seems Robin has learned to read her. He grins, now, and adds, "Or I'll have to finger you senseless again."

Regina snorts a little, can't help herself, fighting down a smile.

"It is what it is, okay?" he tells her. "You had a shit day, you needed a friend."

"Most of my friends don't give me orgasms," she points out, and his brows rise.

"Most?" he questions. "Who's my bloody competition?"

Regina laughs, and amends, "None of my other friends give me orgasms."

"Good," he smirks, and then he's rubbing her palm soothingly over her skin and telling her, "Don't let yourself feel bad about this, please. You were so upset when you came here; I don't expect anything from this. I know the score here, I know the issues, we both do. I just wanted you to breathe, and relax, and feel good for a while."

The small smile she offers him doesn't quite reach her eyes, but she concedes, "Well, you did that. And…" She glances down at his chest, drums her fingers there and tells him quietly, "My therapist says there is nothing wrong with… seeking out this kind of comfort, as long as we both know what this is."

She feels his little hum more than feels it, and then he asks, "Then why do you feel bad?"

Her eyes meet his as she asks, "Do we know both know what this is? That's it's…"

She doesn't even know how to finish that sentence. _She_ doesn't know what this is anymore.

"It was comfort," he tells her. "It was what you needed tonight, and tomorrow we're friends. Right?"

"And that's okay with you?"

"If it wasn't, I'd have said something earlier," he assures her. "Now come on, lay with me for a bit before you go. I don't like to run off right after sex."

He gives her a little press toward him, and Regina gives, sinking back down against his chest and pillowing her head there.

"Stop thinking," he murmurs again, pressing another kiss into her hair.

And, oh, how Regina wishes she could.

Her buzz is definitely gone. She can feel that tingly sensation fading from her limbs, leaving the heaviness behind. It's not unpleasant, but, "My mellow is wearing off."

His fingertips scratch pleasantly between her shoulderblades, and she feels his head tilt a little before he offers, "You want me to roll another?

"No, I should get home soon," she says again, but she's so comfortable here, pressed against him.

She knows she _should_ leave, but to be completely honest, she doesn't particularly _want_ to, not quite yet. Regina clings to the reassurance that it's okay to do this with him. Tells herself that if she hadn't come here, she would have been an anxious mess on her bathroom floor, would have gone to bed on a hollow, empty stomach, and wrought with anxiety. So maybe this isn't the smartest thing she's ever done, but it's not the worst, either.

This is… fine. This is comfort. This is a bad decision for a good reason, and maybe tomorrow, she'll kick herself for it, but right now… Right now she feels safe. So she's going to stay right here, with him, where nothing can touch her, for just a little while longer.


	38. Chapter 38

Despite the mellowing effect of the weed and the toe-tingling satisfaction of the orgasms, Regina doesn't sleep much on Monday night.

She'd stayed at Robin's for a little while longer, had let him coddle and stroke and kiss. And then let him slip his fingers back down and rub her to another gasping peak – "one more for the road," he'd called it – before she'd finally given in to her more responsible inner voice, slipped his shirt off and back into his hands, and left for home.

The bubble of marijuana-induced tranquility had popped as soon as his door had shut behind her, said inner voice muttering the whole way home how insane she'd been to do any of that.

Going over there in the first place, maybe, sure. She'd been in the clutches of an anxiety attack she wasn't likely to easily shake on her own, and he'd helped her settle and calm without having to endure the embarrassment of calling her therapist yet _again_.

But she should probably have left after that.

Logically, she knows this. Or thinks she does. She's not sure anymore?

What she _is_ sure of is that Mother is even more of a monster than she'd previously thought, and has absolutely no sense of decency or conscience when it comes to her pride. Which means that if she remembers Robin, he's in for a world of hurt.

"If" being the operative word.

She doesn't know, has no way of knowing, and the possibilities plague her. She lies in bed, tossing and turning, sleeping fitfully and never for very long, her dreams a lurid kaleidoscope of her mother's horrors.

Fifteen year old Regina trapped – literally trapped – locked in a room with no windows and no doors, and no food or water, just a massive screen where her mother shines down on her, ordering her into one more sit-up, one more, another, another, until her abs ache and tremble, her cheeks wet with sweat and tears. She wakes with her torso clenched tight, her fists and her jaw, too. Wakes sore and miserable, and rakes her fingers through her hair as she turns to look at the clock.

She groans – hours of torture had only taken up twenty minutes of rest.

More tossing, more turning, more staring at the ceiling.

She's not sure when she slips under again, but she dreams of Robin in jail. She's unable to see him, visitors are family only, they tell her. It's days, weeks, months, she doesn't know. She tries again, and they tell her he doesn't want to see her, but he has a message for her: _This is all your fault_.

And then she's in a small room with a big wide window, Robin on the other side of it, strapped to a table. He stares hard through the glass at her, and she realizes what this is, her stomach swooping into her shoes.

This is his execution.

She's ruined him, cost him everything. His freedom, his life, everything.

In a sick turn of fate, it's Mother who wields the fatal syringe, and it's Mother's voice that speaks to her from Robin's lips: "You stupid girl. How did you think this would end?"

Regina sits bolt upright when she wakes this time, gasping and sweaty, her heart pounding, the urge to run next door and press her hand to his beating heart overwhelming.

But it's the middle of the night, and it's just a dream. She knows that. It's just a dream, and he's… he's fine. Probably sprawled peacefully over that unmade bed.

Regina gives up on sleep after that – doesn't even bother to stay in her bed.

She doesn't _want_ to sleep, if that's how sleep is going to go.

Instead, she showers. Soaps up her loofah, and scrubs her skin half-raw, then stands under the hot spray and lets the water run down along her shoulders, her back, her hips and her legs, until her skin is pink and pruning. She tells herself it's pampering when she slathers on a generous layer of shea butter lotion, but really it's just something to do. Something to pass the time between 3:12 AM and breakfast.

After she's lotioned, and done a quick face mask, and swished coconut oil for ten minutes to whiten her teeth (and hopefully purge her mouth of the vaguely lingering aftertaste of pot), she trades her robe for soft pajama pants and Robin's sweatshirt, and takes a book down to the living room.

Somewhere around four AM, she remembers that part of her homework from Dr. Hopper had been to journal her anxiety, so she drags herself back upstairs to the guest room (her limbs feel tired now, heavy, her head a bit cottony) and pulls out a fresh journal from the small collection of pretty volumes she buys but rarely fills.

She chooses one with flowers on it this time. Real, pressed flowers embedded in the rough parchment of the cover, the pages inside thick and pulpy, the kind a pen just sinks down into and rolls over, their edges rough and rustic.

A pretty place to write down all her messy thoughts.

Regina sits at the desk in the guest room and writes until six.

Writes about Mother, writes about Daddy, writes about the sickly awful way she feels right now. Writes about the nightmares.

She writes until she hears her alarm beeping in her bedroom, and then she straightens her hair and does her makeup, pulls on a comfortable-but-classy dress and brews the biggest pot of coffee she can manage.

**.::.**

When she gets to work there are goddamn fucking flowers on her desk, and Regina loses it.

She checks the card, hoping against hope that Robin had made a late night call to 1-800-Flowers, or that Daddy had called the florist after dropping that bomb on her yesterday.

But no.

No, they're from Sidney. Of course they're from fucking _Sidney_.

And she doesn't have the patience for this anymore. Not today, not after the last several days, she just… She just doesn't.

She picks up the vase, her blood pumping hotly in her veins as she stalks to Sidney's office. He's frowning at his computer screen, barely has time to look up and tell her how beautiful she looks this morning before she is cracking the vase down onto his desk and demanding to know, "What are these?"

He frowns at her and says, "They're roses."

"Yes, they are," she hisses. "And I have asked you, more than once—so many times now—to stop giving me things like this. And yet here I am, again, in your office to return _another_ unwanted gift."

So much for avoiding the blunt approach.

Sidney straightens a little in his chair, clears his throat slightly and says carefully, "I overheard you telling Kathryn on Friday that you were having brunch with your parents yesterday. I know how they can be. I thought some flowers might cheer you up."

"Not your place," she tells him, cursing herself for the little bit of guilt she feels that he'd been trying to do something nice and she's bawling him out for it.

But this isn't a nice gesture, she reminds herself. This is him blatantly ignoring what she has asked of him.

"Well, pardon me for trying to do something kind for someone I care about," Sidney says, dropping his gaze slightly, and making this face, this sort of trying-to-hide-my-hurt expression that she wants to believe is real, but my God, she has seen this from her mother so many times. The fake penitence and the fake hurt and the guilt tripping, and she has _had it._

"Sidney, if you really cared about me, you wouldn't ignore everything I say to you."

"I don't ignore everything you say," Sidney shoots back, his gaze slapping up to hers. "I listen to _everything_ you say, I pay more attention to you than anyone else in your life."

 _Ain't that the truth,_ she thinks with a scoff. An actual out-loud scoff that makes his jaw clench and his eyes go flinty for half a second.

She pushes past it, saying, "Well, I want you to stop. I have tried to be nice about it, but I can't anymore. I want you to stop this. You and I are not going to—" She shakes her head, and tells him, "This would never have worked out anyway."

He scowls, and asks her, "Why on earth would you think that?"

Regina has a very simple answer for him: "Henry is eleven."

"What does Henry have to do with—"

"Everything," she insists, because doesn't he get it? "He's everything to me. And he's eleven."

Sidney's brow furrows, confusion written all over his face as he says, "I don't understand how Henry's age is a problem."

Of course he doesn't. Because he doesn't even remember what he doesn't know, does he?

Regina crosses her arms, straightens her back, and looks down on him as she asks, "What's my birthstone?"

Sidney answers without missing a beat: "Amethyst."

"Favorite color?"

"Royal purple."

"Coffee of choice?"

"Americano with a splash of cream," he says with a pleased little smirk, and an addition of, "Or a cappuccino if you're feeling indulgent."

That's wrong – a cappuccino is his coffee of choice, not hers. Too much milk; she's more likely to go for a cortado. But he clearly thinks he's winning, and she's more than happy to let him dig his hole a little deeper before she points out where the flaw is in all of this.

So she challenges, "Favorite sports team?"

"The Red Sox, for some reason," he chuckles, and her jaw tightens.

They were Daniel's favorite, and she never gave a damn about baseball before him. But color her unsurprised that something about a man who isn't him would not blip onto Sidney's radar. God, how could she have been stupid enough to date him?

She shakes off the little bit of self loathing, and asks, "Go-to lunch order?"

"Eat-in or take-out?" Sidney asks smugly, and God, she can't wait to drop the hammer on him in a minute.

"Chinese take-out."

"Steamed chicken and vegetables with garlic sauce on the side and brown rice."

"Sushi?"

"A sashimi lunch special with miso soup, and an avocado salad."

"Eat-in?"

"Kale salad with chicken or salmon, and a seltzer with lime."

"What food do I hate?"

"Raw onions."

"The lotion I keep in my desk—"

"L'Occitane en Provence shea butter hand cream."

Regina nods slightly. Waits a moment to let it all sink in, to let him bolster up his pride in his little victory in the Regina Mills Trivia Game.

And then she reminds him, "You thought my son was nine."

Sidney's face falls, and it's Regina's turn to feel a smug ripple of satisfaction.

"You know everything about me, remember every little piece of trivia," she tells him. "And you thought my son was _nine_. Anyone who's going to be with me has to understand that to love me, you have to love my son. And you may care about me, but you don't care about Henry. It would never have worked. I'm a package deal, Sidney."

He flounders for a moment, clearly caught off guard by his lapse in knowledge. And then he stammers, "I could – I could change that. I could be better."

"I shouldn't have to ask," she tells him simply. "If I have to ask you to make my son a priority, it's not going to work."

"I bought him a birthday gift," Sidney argues. "I did make him a priority."

And oh, that's rich. A maybe fifteen dollar trinket with the bare minimum of thought put into it.

"You did buy him a gift," she nods. And then she points out, "And one for me. And since you've spent the last five years learning every detail of me and very little of Henry, I have to wonder if his gift wasn't just an excuse to drop off mine."

"It wasn't. I do care about Henry," he says, and it might be convincing if he wasn't so insistent. Wasn't trying so hard. "He's important to you, so I care about him."

"But you didn't," Regina tells him. "You haven't. It's too little, too late, Sidney."

He opens his mouth to protest again, but she forges ahead, deciding enough is enough and it's time to stop dancing around this.

"And it's not just about workplace fraternization," she tells him. "You are not the one for me. I don't _want_ to date you."

It's harsh, maybe, but it's true. She forces herself to ignore the way his expression has gone wounded, ignores that part of her that was raised to be polite even when being unkind.

She's tried to be polite, and it's gotten her nowhere, so now she's going to be brutally honest: "I was not in a good place when I said yes, and I shouldn't have. You were a bad rebound decision, and I am sorry that I did that to you. I know it was unfair. But this"—she gestures back and forth between them—"This isn't going to happen again. So please stop showing up uninvited, or showing up in places you know you'll run into me, and please stop leaving me gifts, or doing me little favors. Please stop telling me how beautiful I am. Because you're making me uncomfortable – very uncomfortable. And none of those things will make this work."

He's the uncomfortable one now, shifting slightly in his chair, avoiding her gaze as he adjusts things on his desk needlessly, going from kicked-puppy to a tense-jawed mask of control.

Regina keeps talking, making her feelings very, very clear: "We're not going to date, Sidney, and not because of Leo, or the clients, or our coworkers, or anyone else. Because of us. Because it's not what I want. You're a nice guy, but you're not going to be _my_ guy. So please, back off."

There. It's done. There's no possible way he can misread _that_ dismissal.

Sidney clears his throat, scratches at the side of his nose, and says, "Well… that's just not true, is it?"

"Excuse me?" Regina asks, baffled. He has to be joking. He can't just… He can't just disregard everything she's just said.

But he's not dismissing it, she realizes, as he looks up to meet her gaze again finally, and she finds his expression hard and tinted with anger. He's heard her loud and clear.

"Maybe it's not because of Leo, or the clients, or our coworkers," he says to her, "but it's not about 'no one else,' is it? It's because I'm not a deadbeat bartender, and apparently that's what you're into these days."

" _Excuse me?"_ Regina demands, her brows rising to her hairline as heat flares up the back of her neck.

"You heard me," Sidney tells her simply, quietly, coldly.

"You have no right," she tells him darkly. "I've told you before, Robin and I are just friends, and none of your business."

 _Most of my friends don't give me orgasms_ pops into her head, and she hopes the flush of her anger disguises the extra heat she feels in her cheeks.

"'Just friends' don't stare you down while you're only _talking_ to other men the way he did last weekend," Sidney argues. "He was glowering at you. He's possessive; he has the makings of a jealous man, Regina, and jealous men are dangero—"

"Sidney, he was looking at _you_ ," she interrupts.

This is getting ridiculous. She has not had enough sleep to deal with this.

"Because I was talking to you and he was jealous," Sidney says to her, all confidence.

She has no problem popping that little bubble: "Because you were _there_ , and you weren't invited."

"How would he have known that? I'm a work friend, we dated, I could easily have been—"

"Because it was a _children's_ party, Sidney. For children, and their parents. You don't have a child, you were not there with a child," she reiterates. "And he knew that I was…"

She shouldn't say that. She shouldn't tell Sidney that she's been talking to Robin about him, that won't make any of this any easier.

"He knew that I wasn't expecting any more guests. He's not a jealous man, and—" It's on the tip of her tongue, and she shouldn't, but she does: "And he didn't have anything to be jealous of. He knew that you and I had gone on a couple of dates, and he knew that I wasn't planning on going on any more."

"And how exactly would he know—"

"Because he's my _friend_ , and we talk about things that are upsetting me – like men who won't hear no for an answer no matter how many times I try to politely tell them."

Sidney sobers a little at that, dropping his gaze and adjusting the things on his desk again, shifting them all half a centimeter back to where they'd been to start with.

As he does it, he tells her tensely, "I'm sorry. I didn't realize I was upsetting you. If I had, I wouldn't have— I'm sorry. Thank you for your honesty; I need to get back to work."

Well, alright then.

It's an abrupt end to their conversation, and it's certainly not handling things with the grace Leo had demanded, but… it's done.

And she would really much rather be anywhere but here, so she says, "Of course. And I'm sorry – for saying yes when I shouldn't have, knowing how you felt about me. I could have spared us all of… this."

He's turned his attention back to his computer already, and offers her only an affirming, "Mm," in reply.

It's childish, and petulant, and unprofessional, and Regina has to fight not to roll her eyes.

Instead, she sighs and tells him, "I'll see you at the four o'clock," and then she turns and walks out.

**.::.**

The rest of her morning doesn't go much better.

She seems to have a mountain of emails to wade through for a simple two-day weekend, and a client upset about their latest campaign that she has to call and talk down before he runs it up the chain to Leo and she gets her ass fried for it. (And he would, this client, he absolutely would go straight over her head if he didn't get his little temper tantrum sorted in a timely and sufficient manner.)

By quarter past eleven, she's hungry, over-caffeinated and exhausted.

She has plans to swivel out of her chair and head for the break room to pour even more caffeine on her already frazzled nerves, but she just needs a minute to sit here. And breathe. In silence.

Regina plants her elbows on her desk and drops her head into her palms, the heels of her hands pressing against her eyes until colors dance on the insides of her lids.

She could sleep right here, she thinks. Just like this. She could take a five minute nap – or she could, if she had slept at all last night. But she didn't, so the probability of waking up at noon with a puddle of drool on her desk and a keyboard imprint on the side of her face is far too high to risk it.

So she'll just sit here for a minute and make a mental list of everything in her top two dresser drawers, from left to right. She'd count, it would be more mindless, but it might also help her nod off. So recitation it is.

Top left is bras. Cream with ivory lace, nude underwire, fire engine red, black lace, black silk, black unlined. Royal purple lace crossback—

The knock on her office door startles her so hard she jumps, sucking in a breath as her head snaps up.

It's Sidney. Standing there with a stack of folders in the crook of his arm and a look of haughty amusement.

He asks, "Are you ready?" and Regina frowns.

"Ready for what?"

"The meeting with Heller and his guys."

Regina's frown deepens, her brow wrinkling as she glances at the clock with a moment of panicked fear that she actually _had_ fallen asleep while cataloging her bras and somehow slept for five hours.

But no, no, it's 11:25 in the morning.

"Sidney, that meeting isn't until four," she reminds, but he just smirks some more.

"It _was_ at four," he tells her. "Now it's at eleven-thirty."

"It's—what?" Regina questions, panic spiking hard in her gut. "Since when?"

"Since that email they sent last night," Sidney tells her, and shit. Shit, shit, _shit_.

Regina clicks into her inbox and scrolls back through the messages she hadn't gotten to yet, muttering miserably, "I must have missed it – I didn't know."

Sure enough, there it is. Half past seven last night, and with a priority flag and everything, the subject reading "UPDATED MEETING TIME." How could she have _missed_ this?

"I haven't done the prep yet," she groans, frantically clicking into the necessary documents – God, she hasn't even pulled up the latest metrics. It's going to take her a minute to run them, and then she needs to compile, and print, and collate, and it's eleven twenty-fucking-seven.

She mutters a ripe, "Shit," just as Sidney drops one of the folders he'd been holding, letting it fall to the corner of her desk with a little slap.

"Metrics, progress reports, and estimates for another twelve-week campaign," he tells her.

Regina glances at him, and then the folder, reaches out for it and then thumbs through the pages. They're all here, all the prep she'd needed to do is done and ready to go.

"Individual copies for each attendee, marked with their initials in the corner, just the way you like it. All I need are your signature red pens to hold them all together."

Regina relaxes with a heavy breath, nodding and raking a hand through her hair. "When did you – _How_ did you know that I wouldn't have—"

"You didn't respond to confirm," he tells her. "You always confirm schedule changes as soon as you see them. When you never responded to this one, I knew you must have missed it."

"I did," she sighs, closing out the documents again and admitting, "I'm frazzled today; thank you so much for taking care of this. I'm sorry I dropped the ball."

"Of course," he says, and then with an undercurrent of resentment, he adds, "See? I do know you."

Regina scowls, but by the time she looks up to say something, she's staring at Sidney's back.

She speed-reads the packet in front of her and tries to commit all the figures to memory, but her brain is mush, and nothing sticks.

She stumbles over them in the meeting, has to refer back to her notes several times in a way that makes her feel like she's making an idiot of herself. It's probably not as bad as it feels, she tells herself. Isaac Heller always has that condescending look on his face, she reminds.

Sidney steps seamlessly to her aid more than once – of course he does, because he's had plenty of time to run over the paperwork and probably got a full night's rest on top of it.

It hits her then like a ton of bricks: He had known.

That morning, when she'd left his office and told him she'd see him at four, he had known the meeting was moved. And he hadn't bothered to say a word.

The revelation irks her, distracts her, has her staring at the side of his head so hard she's surprised he can't feel her gaze boring in through his skull.

But for once, he seems oblivious to her. Probably for the best, considering she's the only woman at this table full of particularly obtuse and rude men. Usually she can keep up with them just fine, rather enjoys putting them in their place with a bit of sass and competence, but she's off her game today.

Even Heller notices, making a crack at her expense (his "Maybe if you weren't so busy admiring Sidney's profile, you'd be able to pay better attention to the conversation at hand, Regina," has her clenching her jaw and struggling to find a scathing retort – but not _too_ scathing, he is a client, after all), and she is immensely relieved when the meeting comes to an end.

A satisfying, productive end, with an agreement to extend their campaign and promises that all the requisite paperwork will be drawn up and on its way over by end of day.

Sidney doesn't wait for her to leave the conference room – a rarity for him, but, well, they're clearly having a _day_ , aren't they? So much for her assurances to Leo that she could handle this without screwing up their working relationship.

Regina follows after him, takes a few extra-long strides so she can grab his wrist and stop him.

Sidney turns to face her, asking, "Something you need?"

God, what an ass. What a childish, petulant ass.

Regina cocks her head slightly and asks him, "Why didn't you say anything?"

"What?"

"Earlier." She shakes her head a little and continues, "You knew. You knew I had missed the email, and you didn't say a word until five minutes before the start of the meeting. Why?"

Sidney looks her up and down once, and tells her, "You asked me not to do you any more favors, Regina. I was just trying to _listen_ to your _wishes_."

There's ice in his words, and bitterness, and as Regina watches him walk away she wonders if finally shutting him down has just made everything even more awkward.

**.::.**

By lunchtime, her roses are in the break room.

She has no appetite, between exhaustion and anxiety, so she's just there to fill up her coffee again, but the roses are parked on the center of the table. Mocking her.

Regina avoids looking at them, beelines for the coffee pot and finds it still brewing.

"It was empty when I got here," Kathryn says from the doorway, making Regina jump slightly. "But it should be done soon. I was just coming back to fill up."

"Perfect timing," Regina says with a forced little smile. Just her fucking luck, it's Kathryn and her watered down brew on a day when she needs Sidney and his jet fuel. Still, it's better than nothing.

So she'll wait a minute, and take a chance to catch up, watching as Kathryn glances at the fridge and asks, "Want to know a secret?"

What she wants is a decent cup of coffee, but since she's not getting that, sure, why not?

"I'm all ears," Regina offers, taking her empty mug to the table and sitting down.

Kathryn gets a mischievous look on her face, makes a furtive glance toward the door, and then opens the freezer, pulling out the box of fish sticks that has lived in the back of that thing for God only knows how long, and God only knows what reason.

She brings it to the table, opens the end of it, and unearths a tube of… no…

"Are those Thin Mints?" Regina asks, as Kathryn untwists the end of the sleeve of little chocolate cookies.

"They are," Kathryn smirks, fishing one out and handing it over to Regina. "Mal keeps a stash of them, has for years. She thinks nobody knows."

"But you do," Regina points out, taking the offered treat.

She feels a little lance of guilt at pilfering cookies from Mal – a curious sensation, considering her office loyalties have always been more to the woman in front of her. But it's been a busy summer, a stressful summer – for all of them – and there's a distance here now that wasn't there before.

She's been a bad friend, she realizes. Too caught up in her own drama to help Kathryn through hers, and the guilt just piles on, piece by piece. She should try to do better, be better...

"I discovered them last year," Kathryn confesses. "I sneak one every now and then, but I never told anyone. I figured if everyone knew, she'd catch on. But now I bequeath this secret unto you."

Kathryn munches happily on a cookie of her own, and Regina's brows rise slightly. She takes her own bite, the minty, chocolatey sweetness a delightful change from the bitterness of the coffee she's been drinking all day.

"To what do I owe the honor?" she asks once she's chewed and swallowed.

Kathryn gives the door another glance, then lowers her voice and says, "I got the job."

"The one in D.C.," Regina says; so much for trying to do better. Kathryn nods, and Regina smiles, sadness washing down another bite of Thin Mint.

It's only D.C., she reminds herself. It's a day-trip – not even. But it means no more of these midday coffee breaks, and that's… That makes something in her chest ache.

"I start after Labor Day; I'm telling Leo at the end of the day," Kathryn explains.

"I'm happy for you," Regina tells her, and she means it. She really does. It's just… "But I'm going to miss you. And I'm sorry I haven't… been the greatest friend lately."

"You've been fine," Kathryn assures, shaking her head and telling her, "There's nothing you could have done to fix what David broke. And besides, it seems like you've had your own stuff going on lately."

Regina scoffs, and tells her, "Understatement." And then, "But that's a conversation for another day, and"—She glances around at this little break room, and its oversized bouquet, and contraband cookies, and overused mugs—"another place. Maybe we can find some time before you leave to go out, relax, have dinner?"

"I'd like that," Kathryn agrees, and then she adds, "And I'm only going to D.C. It's not like I'll be so far away that we can't see each other. We'll just have to plan it a little better, that's all."

"Get a place with a spare room," Regina smirks. "Henry loves D.C., maybe we'll come down and spend a weekend every now and then."

"I'm house hunting this weekend; I'll add 'Regina's guest room' to the list of necessities."

They both chuckle a little, and then Kathryn is slipping two more cookies from the sleeve, sliding one across the table to Regina and twisting it closed again, tucking it away in its secret hiding place.

"You don't think she'll notice that _four_ cookies are missing?" Regina questions, popping the last bite of her first cookie into her mouth.

Kathryn goes to check the coffee pot with a shrug, and says, "I'm out of here in two weeks; I don't really care what that bitch notices."

Regina rolls her eyes slightly – she'll be sad to see Kathryn go, but she won't miss that particular office rivalry.

Still, she finds her already sour mood considerably dampened by Kathryn's news – even if she had known it was almost certainly coming. Maybe it's the exhaustion that has it hitting harder than usual. Maybe it's just the edge of loneliness she can't seem to shake lately.

Either way, it's selfish. Kathryn needs a new start, _deserves_ a new start after everything she's been through this summer.

Regina tells herself she should be glad things are going right for _someone_ , even if it doesn't feel particularly like they're going right for her.

And then she takes a bite of that second cookie.

**.::.**

By two, she has a building sense of dread.

The light of her computer monitor is making her eyes ache, and there's an ominous little spot shimmering at the edge of her vision.

Aura.

The last thing she needs today is a migraine, but she doesn't have anything stronger than an Advil on hand, so it looks like she'll probably be getting one.

She reduces the brightness on her monitor, turns off her fluorescent overhead light, shuts her door to close out some of the usual noise of the office. Anything she can do to keep from exacerbating her impending headache further before the end of the day.

The buzz of her phone on her desk sounds overly loud in the quiet of her office, and she scoops it up quickly to find Robin's name on her screen. Her stomach swoops nervously, a little flush of embarrassment over last night heating her skin, but she swipes her thumb across the screen anyway, answering the call with a quiet, "Hi…"

"Hello, love," he greets cheerily. So he clearly doesn't have any regrets. "Is this a good time?"

It's… not ideal, to be honest. She has plenty to get done before the end of the day, and the sooner she can clear the essentials off her desk, the sooner she can beg Leo's sympathy for the pressure starting to threaten at her temple and try to cut out early.

But she tells him, "I can carve out a minute to talk. What's up?"

"I just dropped Roland at daycare for the afternoon," he says; she can hear the edge of disappointment in his voice, no matter how much he tries to hide it. "And I have a bit of time to kill before I have to pick him up. So I thought maybe I could wander by, take you out for coffee…?"

Oh, wonderful. Just what she needs. Robin, in this office, while Sidney is in the mood he is, and just after she's told him there's nothing going on between herself and the neighbor.

"I… don't think that's such a good idea," she tells him reluctantly.

"Just as friends," he assures. "I know that last night was just last night; I wasn't meaning for it to be a—"

"It's not that," she tells him, although it should be that. It really should be. "I just have a lot to get done here, and I have a migraine brewing, and… I had a… disagreement... with Sidney this morning, and I don't think you showing up here would help at all with the little snit he's been in ever since."

"A disagreement I ought to be concerned about?" Robin asks her darkly, in that protective possessive tone he sometimes gets that she shouldn't find nearly as attractive as she does.

"Nothing I can't handle," she promises. "He's just in a mood. It'll blow over."

She hopes.

Robin lets out a little, "Mm," a dissatisfied little sound. But he drops the subject – imagine that, a man who can respect when she wants to let something die.

He switches topic, asking, "If you're feeling poorly, I can take Henry a little early, get dinner before his lesson tonight."

"Oh, no, it's fine," she assures. "I can handle dinner; I don't want to put you out."

"You're forgetting I called you because I have nothing to do," he says to her, and she feels her lips curving even as that little spot on the edge of her vision begins to spread and tremble.

She should probably take him up on it. If she can't kill this thing soon, it's only going to get worse, and she may feel up to making dinner _now_ , but who knows how she'll feel in a few hours.

His voice is lower, softer, when he urges, "You've had a shit couple of days, yeah? Let me take him for the night, give you some time to yourself."

"You already did that on Saturday," she reminds him. She can't keep doing this – pawning her son off on the neighbor because she's too stressed to parent. She doesn't get to be too stressed to parent, that's not how it works.

"And I'm offering to do it again," he says to her, before amending, "Actually, no, I'm not. I'm not offering, I'm asking. Do you mind if I pick up your son for the evening, take him over to the music shop for a bit, then see he gets some dinner before his lesson? I'm really rather bored, and could use the company."

"Do I mind?"

"Mmhmm," he says, far too smugly. He's trying to reverse psychology her, and it would be cute if it didn't make her feel so guilty. She chews her lip, and sighs, shuts her eyes for a moment to let them rest (there's no good reason for her to be staring at the cursor on the document she's reviewing, after all).

"Would it bother you?" he asks pointedly, when she doesn't respond.

"Yes," she sighs, admitting, "It makes me feel… like a bad parent."

"Have you given your son any panic attacks lately?" he questions, and she scowls, well aware of the point he's trying to make there and not particularly enjoying having her tender spots poked at.

"No," she answers tersely. "But I have sent him to your place enough times that I'm a little worried he's going to develop abandonment issues."

Robin chuckles a little over the line, teasing her with, "You're worried he's going to get abandonment issues because you keep letting him hang out with the cool guy with the guitars?"

"Fair point," she mutters wryly. "Maybe I'm afraid he'll start to think you're cooler than me. I'll be old news."

"I'm definitely cooler than you," he grins – she can _hear_ the spread of his smile in the tone of his voice. "That ship sailed around the time you ate a pot brownie and got worried about your exams."

Regina scoffs a laugh – she'd forgotten she'd told him about that last night.

"My son doesn't know about that – and never will," she warns.

"He won't if you let me take him for the evening. If you don't, well, who knows what will come out during his lesson," Robin threatens, but it's empty. He'd never tell Henry, she knows that, he knows that, they both know that.

And she's not sure why she's fighting this so hard when a night of quiet and rest would probably do her a world of good. She could nap. Could go straight home and lie down and rest for a little while, migraine or not – she needs sleep, desperately, and she's so beat that she probably won't even dream. She'll just crash.

So, "Fine," she relents. "You have my permission to take him for dinner – if he wants to go."

"Thanks ever so," he tells her, far too pleased with himself for having worn her down. "I appreciate your help with my paralyzing boredom."

"Uh huh," she answers doubtfully.

"Take care of yourself," he urges her, with far too much tenderness and concern. "You're allowed to be human, you know."

Tears burn against her lashes all of a sudden, and she swallows thickly, rasps, "Yeah," and then tells him, "I need to get back to work."

"Alright. Feel better."

She murmurs a thank you, and then their goodbyes, and then she ends the call and swipes her thumb gently over the screen.

He's too good to her. Spoiling her. She should stop this.

But maybe leaning on him one more time won't hurt.

**.::.**

By the time she leaves work, everything is too bright, and too loud. The lights vibrate and pierce into her skull like an icepick lobotomy, and she has to take a minute in the dark of the parking garage to settle her forehead on fists clenched around her steering wheel, soaking in the lack of fluorescents before she has to deal with traffic.

It doesn't do much to quell the painful, pulsing pressure, and she really just wants to get home – to her bed, and her migraine prescription, and the quiet that Robin has so kindly provided for her – so she decides to just muscle through her commute and get it over with.

Thank God that it's summer, that the sun may be starting to set (the yellow-orange glow of it reflects off the glass and chrome high-rises and does her no favors; she resorts to flipping her sun visor down in an attempt to block out what little of it she can), but at least it's not nighttime. If it was dark out, there would be headlights, and night driving with a migraine is just an exercise in torture. Every too-bright beam lances into her too-sensitive eyes like a blade when it's dark, but tonight is… bearable.

She keeps the radio off, tries to find as much silence as she can, curses the car that pulls up next to her with vibrating, pumping bass that nearly rattles both her windows and her cranium. She squints against the fading daylight, shuts her eyes at every stoplight and counts to ten, then checks the flow of opposing traffic and steals a little more darkness if she can.

It helps, a little, but it's all just a stopgap. Just what she needs to do to get home in one piece.

She makes it, but by the time she pulls into her garage, the whole left side of her head is pulsing, her skull feels like a balloon but also like it's filled with cement, and having her eyes open _hurts_. Her stomach is pitching dangerously, the nausea that had been rising higher and higher with every minute she'd been behind the wheel now pushing up, up, up.

She needs to get inside, now, needs to lie down and take an Imitrex and pray for sleep.

She's so anxious to make it into the house that she doesn't remember to stop her car door from slamming shut; the impact ricochets through her brain like a gunshot. Climbing the back steps somehow makes it worse, makes the pain pound and pound and her fingers shake as she tries to get the key in the door. It takes her two tries, but she manages, shutting the door quietly and heading straight for the meds she keeps in her kitchen.

She should have a few tabs of Imitrex left in the bottle down here, and she _definitely_ has Excedrin migraine. She works open the cap on the Imitrex and finds one blessed pill inside, popping it into her mouth and washing it down with a palmful of water from the faucet.

Bed. She needs bed. Bed, and quiet, and to just lie down and take a long nap before this pain has her throwing up for the second time in twenty-four hours.

She's halfway down the hall toward the stairs before she realizes her fatal error – painfully.

The keypad to the alarm is by the front door – an inconvenience she wishes she'd thought better about when they'd installed it, and that she curses violently today when her rush to pound down some prescription relief had consumed her thoughts to the extent that she'd forgotten entirely about killing the alarm.

She remembers now, though, when it blares to life with a shrill, agonizing wail that explodes in her skull so fiercely that she actually cries out at the pain.

Oh God, this is hell, she's in hell, she lives in hell.

The front hallway swims through a blur of vertigo and tears as she stumbles to the wall and punches Henry's birthday in blindly on the keypad, her own panting breaths sounding overly harsh and loud when the room suddenly falls blessedly silent again.

The pain is excruciating, swelling up her throat, filling her mouth with thick saliva, and she has a moment to decide whether she wants to attempt the stairs or backtrack to the powder room.

She thinks of the back steps and chooses the powder room, making her way there as quickly as possible, not bothering with the light because lights are evil. She swallows heavily as she lifts the toilet seat, tips her head forward and feels an extra sharp throb of pain squeeze around her temple, and then comes the heaving.

The miserable, sloshing retching as she vomits again, and again, each wave sending a pulse of agony through her already beleaguered brain. She has a vague awareness that she's throwing up liquid, just liquid, bitter, sour liquid, and she realizes she hasn't eaten all day.

She'd had yogurt for breakfast and then coffee, and coffee, those two Thin Mints, and more coffee.

No wonder she feels like shit.

The retching stops for a moment, and she can hear the vague echo of her heavy breaths reverberate in the porcelain, can smell sick and the slight chemical smell of toilet bowl cleaner, and, God, those aren't helping, none of this is helping.

She needs to get her head out of this toilet.

She lifts it slowly, eyes still shut, and tries to regulate her breathing.

She should flush, but she only wants to do that once, wouldn't do it at all if she wasn't determined to take a nap and afraid Henry would come home to a toilet full of vomit before she wakes up. So she should flush, but she wants to wait until she's sure the vomiting is done, and she only has to hear the migraine-amplified whooshing once.

When she hears Robin's voice, she thinks she's actually hallucinating from the pain. It's that bad, she would believe it.

It's a gentle, "Regina, love," and then his hand on her shoulder, and she can't even bring herself to be embarrassed. She will be tomorrow, probably, but right now all she can think about now is how it hurts so much she can't think.

And Robin is there, and she likes Robin, and that's good.

"Babe, are you alright?" he asks her, and God bless him, he keeps his voice down as he does it—he must have remembered she'd said she had a migraine brewing. Regina could kiss him for the consideration but he'd probably rather she didn't.

She lifts one shaky hand and presses it to her left eyeball, the heel of her hand digging in as she whimpers. She's pretty fucking far from alright.

She hadn't realized her whimper had been a word – _Migraine_ – until he murmurs a sympathetic, "It got the best of you, hmm?" and then, "Can I help?"

Her stomach still feels shaky, and she realizes with another pitiful whine that she just threw up the last Imitrex in that bottle before it had a chance to dissolve, much less do her any good. There should be another upstairs; God, she hopes there's another upstairs.

She manages to mutter, "C-cold pack," before another stab into her eyeball has her wincing.

"Freezer?" he asks, and she nods, and well, that was a mistake. "Alright, I'll get it," he assures, moving back from her slightly. She turns her head automatically to follow him, she doesn't know _why_ , because it has another throb of pain echoing in her skull, and the nausea that hadn't quite abated rears up with a vengeance.

She pitches forward over the toilet again and gags up another wet slosh, and Robin's hand is on her back again, rubbing circles between her shoulder blades as she retches another time.

"Do you need a doctor?" he asks as she white knuckles the back of the toilet, her other hand fisting at her crown to keep her hair out of the way.

"No," she gasps, because this is awful, but no, she doesn't. She can beat it into submission if she just gets, "Cold pack. Water. Drugs."

"Ice water or no?"

"Cool – no ice," because the last thing she needs is a brain freeze.

"Which drugs?"

"Upstairs," she manages. "I need to get—nightstand—upstairs…"

"Okay, hold on," he urges, and she thinks she feels a phantom kiss on the back of her head but she's vomiting again a second later, so she can't be sure.

He's gone for hours.

It can't be hours, but it feels like forever as she empties what's left in her stomach, until it's just dry heaving and spit and stomach acid, and she's debating again whether to flush. She realizes with a flood of relief that Robin can do it once she's upstairs, assuming he is not, in fact, a hallucinatory mirage and does actually return to her.

He comes back, finally, pressing the heavenly cold of the gel ice pack into her hand. Regina lifts it to her temple and breathes a sigh of relief.

"Can you handle mouthwash?" he asks her, and she sighs a grateful, _Please_.

It's Henry's Scope, not her Listerine, thank God—she can tell from the sweeter minty scent of it. She's not sure she could handle the burning intensity right now, but this she can stomach for a minute. She hopes.

He helps her tip the bottle straight to her lips, and that's not how it works, you fill the cap and then — oh, fuck it, it doesn't matter. Regina takes a little sip, just enough to swish away the sourness in her mouth and then she leans forward and spits it into the entirety of her stomach contents, and gratefully takes the cup of water he presses into her hand next.

She sips once, twice, and then it occurs to her to ask, "Why are you here?"

"We were on the way back to the house; I heard the alarm," he explains. "I got the boys to my place then came to check on you."

Regina grunts a little in acknowledgement, but doesn't offer up anything else. Her head feels like it's going to split right down the middle and crack open like a canteloupe.

"I didn't know which bottle it was," he tells her next, and she hears the soft rattle of capsules in prescription bottles. It sounds like dice rattling in Vegas, too loud, too much. She just wants her bed…

She tells him, "Imitrex," and winces a little as he leans away from her, pulling the door open further to read the labels.

Regina doesn't realize until just then that they're practically in the dark; he's wedged himself in here with her and shut the door nearly all the way behind them.

He's a wonderful man. A caring, kind, wonderful man, and her bitch of a mother can go and hang for keeping her from him for all Regina cares.

Robin fishes out the proper pill and urges her, "Open your mouth," before dropping it onto her tongue.

Right.

She's still holding the water.

She lifts it and sips again to wash down the pill, and now she just needs to keep from throwing _this_ one up, and maybe she can get some sleep.

"What now?" he urges, and she pleads, _Bed_.

The cup gets nipped from her fingers, settles onto the countertop with a soft clink that bounces hard inside her temples, and then there are strong, steady hands guiding her up onto her feet, an arm looping around her waist, and the wash of too much light illuminating the inside of her eyelids.

"I've got you," he murmurs, and she knows he will, he does, so she doesn't bother opening her eyes. She lets him lead her to the stairs, then up them one by one, her left temple pulsing with every other step.

She practically collapses on top of her bed, climbing in and curling fetal around her pillow, pressing the cold-pack against her skin without a care as to whether the icy surface will freeze it. Robin does care, apparently, though, because a minute later (once he's eased the shoes off her feet, and unzipped the back of her skirt, and tugged the covers from the far side of the bed to wrap around her like a cozy little burrito), he's lifting the pack away gently, returning it a second later with a layer of soft cotton between it and her temple.

She can hear the scrape of the drapery loops on their rods as he tugs her curtains over the sheers, shutting out the rest of the light, and then his hand is gentle on her shoulder again.

"Anything else I can do?"

It sounds like Everest, but she knows, "I need food. I haven't… I need something."

"Can you eat right now?" he questions doubtfully, and who can blame him after what he walked in on.

"Just… a few slices of bread, and more water – the bottle you gave me when I was sick is in the dishwasher. It's clean, I ran it this morning."

"Okay," he murmurs, his palm coasting up and down her bicep again, and then he asks, "Do you want me to stay a while?"

She doesn't. She's in too much pain to be embarrassed, but there's plenty of time for that tomorrow, and the less he sees of her in this state the better. So she mutters something about, no, the boys, she'll be okay…

Robin retrieves everything she asks for, then he lifts that ice pack away again, presses a soft kiss to the nexus of the pain and pressure, then eases it gently back into place and leaves her again.

She doesn't sleep.

Wants to, prays to, but doesn't. The meds seem to take forever to kick in, and she has to focus to chew and swallow and keep down the bites of bread she keeps clumsily fumbling off the two slices of seven-grain Robin had left on a plate within reach. She makes it through most of one, half a bottle of water.

And then she has to pee, a Herculean task she manages to accomplish without turning on any lights or throwing up any of her bread.

The pain is ebbing a bit. Squeezing and pulsing but not stabbing quite as much.

It doesn't abate enough for sleep, though. Not even when she strips herself out of her work clothes after using the bathroom, pulling on his hoodie again and tucking herself into bed properly.

She forces down the rest of that single slice of bread, leaves the other on her nightstand and curls up with her water bottle like it's something far more comforting than a cylinder of plastic she sips softly at every few minutes.

It's dark outside by the time sleep finally pulls her under.

When she wakes in the morning to the beeping of her alarm, she's disoriented and sleep-drunk, migraine hungover and exhausted before she even begins. Her head still aches dully, but it's just an echo.

Still, echoes are ominous, and she takes another Imitrex just to be on the safe side.

Her body feels like lead. Heavy and clumsy and under-rested. She'd slept for hours, but between the catch-up from the night before and the pain of the migraine, it clearly hadn't been particularly rejuvenating.

She checks on Henry, peeks into his room and finds it empty.

That's… unexpected. Robin was taking him for dinner and his lesson, but she'd imagined he'd be home by bedtime.

Then again, Robin had watched her vomit half her brain out last night, so it shouldn't surprise her all that much that he'd kept Henry overnight.

Still, he could have asked, or told her, or…

It occurs to her that he probably had, and she checks her phone, finding that, sure enough, there's a text from him: _The boys wanted a sleepover. Didn't figure you'd mind. Let me know when you're feeling better._

It's far too early for him to be awake, but she texts him anyway: _I'm awake. I'm alive. Thank you for last night._

And then she takes a deep breath, and prays that Tuesday is a better day.


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter would not be possible without the help of the lovely lillie-grey and her cricket skills. Also big thanks to belleoftheballpoint verkaiking and sometimesangryblackwoman for their fancy beta skills. Trigger warnings for mentions of emotional abuse and disordered eating.

She makes it through Tuesday relatively unscathed, aside from the insomnia that hits when she tries to go to bed.

It's not dreams this time, but thoughts. A whirling dervish of unending thoughts about her mother, her parents, secrets, and blackmail. About how she could have gone the last twenty years without knowing how _bad_ things truly were. About how Mother could possibly be even _worse_ than she thought.

They keep her up, these thoughts. Wake her from fitful dozes when they let her sink under at all.

By the time she arrives for her weekly session with Dr. Hopper on Wednesday night, she's overtired and overstressed, concealer carefully caked beneath her eyes to cover dark circles. She's anxious, and moody, and desperately wants to talk.

Wants this all sorted out so she can get some goddamn _rest_ , because she can't keep going like this. She can't _function_ like this.

She's glad when Archie opens the door to beckon her into his office, offering the usual, "Regina, come on in."

She nods, and follows, settling onto the couch and beckoning Pongo up onto the cushions immediately. He curls up beside her, his head across her lap, and she smiles slightly as her fingers trace along the curve of his skull. Clearly someone can tell she's had a bad week.

"Okay, Regina, you know the routine, you have fifty minutes," Archie tells her. "What would you like to talk about today?"

"My parents," Regina answers without hesitation. "That's what we said we were going to talk about this session, right?"

"There is no right or wrong, Regina," he tells her. "It's important to have guidelines so we have somewhere to start if you aren't sure, but if something comes up in the week that you need to talk about we can always do that instead."

 _If something comes up in the week_ , she repeats to herself, and she could almost laugh about it. What _hasn't_ come up in the not-even-a-week since her last session?

Her voice is a little tight when she tells him, "I need to talk about my parents." And their disaster of a marriage, her sham of a home. "We had lunch with them on Sunday for Henry's birthday, and my mother was… my mother." She rolls her eyes slightly and takes advantage of the freeing honesty of therapy to declare Cora, "A sanctimonious bitch under a polite smile – at least, as much of a bitch as she's willing to be around Henry."

"What do you mean?" Dr. Hopper asks, settling more comfortably in his chair with his usual pencil and notepad. "How was she behaving?"

"Snooty and obnoxious, as usual," Regina tells him, trying to put Cora's particular mood into words and coming up with, "Needling. She was annoyed because we cancelled the week before, and we were at the Club, so she was… pushing back at me. She started to make a comment to Henry about us blowing off our original plans, and I got angry with her."

She's too old to look for validation in others (at least, she tells herself that), but there's still a tiny part of her that hopes Archie is proud when she tells him, "I set very clear boundaries for how this brunch was going to proceed, about what was off limits, and threatened to leave if she was… hurtful. So, naturally, she had to let me have it at least once before we left, just to remind me who's boss. At least she had the decency to wait until Henry had left the table before she publicly humiliated me."

"She humiliated you? Do you want to talk more about that?"

"Not really," Regina sighs. Because what would really be the point? "Same old song – she made a comment about my weight and my eating habits in front of the waitress."

Regina smirks, and adds triumphantly, "But I got a free mimosa out of it, so joke's on her, I suppose."

Archie chuckles a little at her little victory, then asks, "Did her comments affect your eating habits this week?"

It's not a surprising turn of conversation, considering what she'd just told him, and her history. And Mother's uncanny ability to derail her healthy eating habits with one carefully placed barb.

"Monday wasn't great," she admits to Dr. Hopper. "But it was more of an exhaustion-induced coffee binge than it was a reaction to her. And I paid for it, dearly, so I've made a point to actually eat properly since then. I'm doing fine."

"Alright," he nods slightly, scribbles a little something on his notepad and leaves it at that. "What about Henry? Did he have a good time?"

"I think so…" Regina frowns, scratching absently along Pongo's neck, under his chin the way he likes. "Mother saved her most uncomfortable comments for when he was away from the table. But I realized halfway through brunch that the whole idea had been a mistake." She sighs, and tells him, "I thought brunch at the Club would be nice for him. Something special. But dinners at the Club aren't really special to Henry, they're just what I was always raised to believe special occasions should look like. Washington was special for Henry. He'd have been just as happy getting his gifts from his grandparents somewhere else, and there would have been less posturing between me and Mother. Less tension – and he's old enough now to notice the tension, no matter how hard I try to keep it from him."

"Kids are often more perceptive than we give them credit for, and Henry is getting older. He's only going to start noticing and commenting on these things more as time goes on."

"Great," she mutters. Just what she needs. Henry becoming _more_ observant.

For a moment, there's a lull – one that has no business existing in these fifty minutes, considering the way her home life had shattered at her feet on Sunday (not to mention the way she'd chosen to cope with it), but she hasn't actually had to put voice to the awful things her mother had done all those years ago, and now that she's faced with the prospect, she finds her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.

She _wants_ to talk about it, she just… doesn't want to talk about it. She wants to _have_ talked about it, wants to sleep well at night, wants to pretend it never happened and that she never knew about it.

So she's going to spend a minute petting a perfectly content Dalmatian while she gathers her nerve.

Dr. Hopper doesn't let her wait long, though, encouraging her into further conversation by asking, "You've mentioned your mother was… difficult, but how was your father?"

Regina gives a dry, humorless chuckle, and says, "It was good to see him. But… he…" Robbed three days of sleep and twenty years of not-even-good memories from her. But they were still _her_ memories, damnit, and now they're all… tainted.

What she ends up saying is, "He made it a very stressful day."

"Oh?" Archie asks curiously. "And why is that?"

Where to begin?

She starts with the little things: "He always tries to manage everything, to be the go-between, and…"

Regina exhales heavily, and resigns herself to recounting most of a day she'd rather forget: "Mother was in a mood, and she ordered salad — and I didn't want to give her any low hanging fruit to grab at, so I got an even smaller salad. Daddy purposely didn't finish his lunch, so he could give me the leftovers—They got Henry riding lessons for this birthday, and the first one was Sunday, so my father went with us to the stables. He insisted on driving, so I could eat, and Henry made a comment about me eating again when we'd just had lunch, and it…"

She shakes her head, admitting softly, "It threw me, especially after everything Mother had just said. It upset me. I knew he didn't mean it the way Mother does when she says things, but I was still raw and Henry saying something about it just… hurt. And before I could think of how to answer him, my father did. He told him that grandma is a bully, and that I hadn't eaten very much at lunch so she wouldn't be mean to me, and I just… I was embarrassed. I don't want Henry to know these things. But it's like the tension – he's too old now, he sees her mean streak whether I want him to or not."

"Is that because you don't want to alter your son's opinion of his grandmother or because you're worried it will alter the way he sees you?" Archie asks her, shifting his notepad slightly as he studies her.

"Me," she concedes with a little quirk of her lips. "I want him to see me as strong, and capable, and dependable – and I know that he does. But I don't want anything to change that. I don't want him to see my weak spots."

Dr. Hopper nods at that, and asks, "How did Henry respond to what your father was saying?"

"He mostly listened. He…" She laughs bitterly, and says, "He asked why my father never stops her. Daddy didn't have an answer for that one."

"Did Henry give any other indication that he thinks of you differently, then? Or was that the end of the conversation?"

"That was the end," she tells him. "I ended it. I told them to drop it, that I didn't want to talk about it anymore. And then later, when we were at the stables, I told my father that I wished he hadn't said that to Henry, and we got to talking about kids noticing things, noticing when something is wrong with the adults in their lives. And…"

Her guts go sour, nerves and disgust swimming down deep and making them writhe and wriggle.

 _Just rip the Band-Aid off_ , she tells herself. Just _say_ it. Here in this room, and let it fucking die here.

"We were talking about him and Mother," she begins, but her palms grow damp and the words are still sticky. "About all the tension that _I_ grew up in. And… he told me things about their marriage that I… wasn't prepared for. And I can't stop thinking about them."

"Are those things what you wanted to talk about today?" Dr. Hopper asks her, and she feels all those… _feelings_ rush back up to the surface. The ones she's been desperately trying to shove down since Sunday.

She drops her gaze to the dog as she feels tears well up in her eyes, and her throat feels tight, clogged, so she doesn't answer Dr. Hopper aside from a jerky nod.

She can do this. She's done much harder things than talk about uncomfortable family revelations in this room. She just needs to breathe, and take it one word at a time.

And maybe pet this dog for a minute first.

"It's okay, Regina," Archie tells her kindly as she fiddles with Pongo's silky ears. "Take your time."

Regina is grateful for him – Dr. Hopper. For his patience with her. For the moments he's willing to just wait her out and let her gather her thoughts, steel her resolve.

Pongo rolls onto his back slightly, his dopey doggy smile staring up at her as she pets along his side, his chest, and tries to blink back her tears.

She succeeds, mostly, her voice only a little raspy when she tells him something that isn't at all the details of her parents' marriage:

"I haven't been sleeping well since the weekend. I still have the last of that Sonata you prescribed, but I've been trying to get to sleep on my own, and by the time it becomes apparent that isn't happening, it's too late to take something. And I probably shouldn't anyway – they're expired."

It's avoidance, maybe, but it's still relevant.

And it gets Dr. Hopper to offer, "I can always write you a new prescription. It's important that you're able to rest, but we don't want it to get to the point that you're dependent on the drugs to sleep. We'll have to keep an eye on it, but I'll call you in a new script at the end of the session."

"Thank you," Regina whispers, almost embarrassed by the relief she feels at the prospect of a fresh bottle. It's not so much that she wants to pop a pill tonight, just that she likes the comfort of knowing she has plenty on hand and doesn't have to weigh whether _tonight's_ insomnia is going to be better or worse than _tomorrow's_. Whether it's bad enough to warrant prescription-strength help. Although to be fair, even when it is, "I try not to take them, but…"

"They are there for a reason," Dr. Hopper reminds gently. "There is no shame in taking them if you need them, and it sounds like you might need them at the moment."

Having her sleep deprivation so easily acknowledged by someone other than herself makes Regina suddenly _acutely_ aware of it – like Dr. Hopper has just given her permission to feel the full brunt of her exhaustion. Her eyes are tired, strained, and she's grateful suddenly that he keeps the room a little on the dim side – all incandescent bulbs rather than buzzing, too-white fluorescents.

"I know," she sighs, because she doesn't want to need the pills, but she's feeling more and more like taking them is inevitable. "But you know me. Stubborn. I like to think I don't need them. And then it's four AM, and I'm still awake."

"What's been keeping you awake?" he asks, bringing her back around to the topic she really _should_ be discussing.

She's wasting time. Burning through more and more of those precious fifty minutes as she hems and haws and skirts around what's really bothering her.

If she's not careful, she'll small-talk herself right out of a productive hour.

So alright. Just like a Band-Aid. Quick and painful.

Regina takes a deep breath, scratches Pongo's belly, and forces the words up from her own: "When I was in high school, the year I was in treatment, my father found out my mother was having an affair. I knew things were bad back then, but I always thought it was me. My fault. Because I was sick. But it wasn't."

Her father's _You were born_ echoes in her head, but she reminds herself that he didn't mean it the way it sounded. That she wasn't the problem, he had insisted as much.

But at the same time, "I mean, I'm sure that didn't help; Mother hated that I was so... weak. But—"

"You weren't weak—"

"I know," she reassures him. "I know that, but she always saw it that way." And made damn sure Regina always knew it, too. "Daddy said she'd wanted to pull me out of treatment entirely and just deal with it at home. She never took what I was going through seriously; I was always the one failing, never her."

"Do you believe that?" Dr. Hopper asks her, his head tilting just a little to the side, pencil poised over the paper in a way that makes Regina feel like she's just stumbled into an oral exam.

She hasn't, though. She knows that. There's no right or wrong answer to the question, as long as she's honest. So she tries to be, answers, "No. I don't. I was responding to the pressure she put me under." And because she needs to say it sometimes, needs to hear it and have it acknowledged, she adds, "My eating disorder is not my fault."

"That's an incredibly healthy way of looking at it, Regina," Archie praises her. "I'm proud of you."

The compliment sinks into her chest like a balm and spreads warmth straight into her heart. So much for not looking for outside validation.

"Thank you," she says, a little smile trying to make itself known on her face, even though she knows this is just more stalling. "But that's… This isn't the point, it isn't why I'm here."

"We have gotten a bit off topic," he concedes, "though I think it's important to acknowledge your patterns of thought, especially when you're under this much stress and when you've been around the people who have triggered your difficulties in the past. You said you found out your mother had been unfaithful to your father – is that what's been weighing on you?"

She chuckles ruefully, mutters, "Tip of the iceberg." Although it is, admittedly, a fairly large… tip. Still, it's nothing compared to what's been hiding under the surface.

And she needs to _deal_ with the rest of that iceberg, so she can finally put her mind at rest. So she screws up enough courage to tell Archie, "My father was the one with all the money when they married, so he had her sign a prenup. And that prenup has a fidelity clause – if he left her because she was unfaithful, she didn't get anything. And you know my mother."

He nods, and says, "She doesn't strike me as the type of woman who would willingly walk away from what she considered to be hers."

"Definitely not," Regina agrees. "She blackmailed him. My being in therapy was a poorly kept secret; people knew. And she used it against him. She told him that if he left her, she would say the reason I was so troubled was because he had been…" Her heart knocks hard and twists sharply as she tries to find the right words (God, there's nothing right about these words).

"Because he had been _inappropriate_ with me," is what she settles on.

Something about hearing those words, something about _saying_ them, is freeing. The words alone don't bring relief from her torment, but wrapping her tongue around them, hearing them in her own voice, it opens a little hot spring of anger that had been hiding under her disgust. Her nerves melt under the steam of it, bitterness bubbling up to the top.

She lets it flow, bites, "Nevermind that I was there because of _her_ , and nevermind that she wouldn't have been able to prove it. All she had to do was whisper it to someone at the Club, and it would spread like wildfire, and he'd be ruined. If she said it to the lawyers, they'd have to look into it whether it was true or not. She _used me_ to keep her money. She threatened him with… with _that_. And I am so angry. And I hate her so much right now; I never want to see her again. And I'm angry that he told me. And I'm angry that he didn't tell me sooner. And I can't sleep, I can't stop _thinking_ about it."

She sucks in a breath, her heart pounding now, her fingers restless against Pongo's coat. She hadn't realized quite how _furious_ she is about all of this until right now.

"Are you upset because he's told you now?" Archie asks her. "Would you rather have never known? Or are you upset because they're still together?"

 _All of the above_ , she thinks bitterly.

"We talked about that – before he told me about the affair," she tells him. "I asked why he never just left if we were all so unhappy, if he hated the way she treated me – why he didn't just take me and go. I wasn't expecting… I know they don't love each other; they've been in separate rooms since" —she scoffs a little and continues bitterly— "Well, since she had an affair and then blackmailed her husband. And when I asked him at first, he said it was because of me. That he'd been afraid when I was younger that if they divorced, she'd get custody and he didn't want me to be stuck with her alone. Even before I was sick, he saw the way she was, and he stopped loving her. But he stayed, for me. Women get custody more often than men, and she's a vindictive, manipulative bitch; he didn't want to take the risk that she'd win."

It makes her heart ache, something inside of her just _aches_ that this could have all been done differently, that she could maybe have been _free_ so much sooner, could maybe have been free, _period_ , and yet, here they are. Because of her, because of Daddy. Because Mother is a monster.

"And you don't understand why they're still together? Custody obviously isn't an issue any longer, you're a grown woman."

"I can understand why they were together then," she concedes, because she hates it, but she can _understand_ it. "I can understand why he wanted to stay, for me, when I was young. I feel guilty about it, but I understand. But I don't understand why he's with her now, not after what she did. I was old enough then, I could have spoken for myself, I could have said I wanted to be with him." She has to believe that, has to believe her word would have counted for something. She'd been fifteen, for God's sake, she wasn't a young child. "I could have said it was all lies, that he'd never laid a hand on me, that _she_ was the monster. But he never gave me the chance. And then I was gone, off at college, and he still stayed. I don't understand that."

Archie nods, questions, "And you're angry with your father for staying?" and no, that's not quite right.

She's not angry with Daddy, not truly. Okay, she _is_ , but… it's complicated.

"I'm angry with _her_ ," she insists, because _that_ , at least, is not complicated. "For being her. For using me like that when I was sick. For making him feel like he had to protect me in the first place. And I'm angry because he deserves better than her, and he stayed for me." Her voice breaks a little, tears rushing up to the surface again when she forces herself to confess, "I ruined his life. He'd never say it, but… He got stuck with her. Because they had me."

"But he's an adult," Archie reminds calmly. "You are not responsible for his decisions. And it's okay to be angry with him, too. Because he stayed. Because he didn't spare you from growing up with Cora."

"He's a good man," Regina insists. "I love him. He tried."

"But?"

But she's still furious. She's so angry, all of a sudden, now that she's talking about this. Angry, and hurt, and sad, and _betrayed_. She feels betrayed, and she has no right to, because she knows firsthand about parents hiding ugly truths from their children, but, my God, this is not the same as _Robin robbed Grandma and Grandpa_. This is _different_. This is _more._

And yet…

"He gave up his whole life for me; I don't think I get to be angry at him," Regina tells Dr. Hopper. "I know I said I was angry at him for telling me, and not telling me, but… I think I'm just _angry_. That it happened, that…" That they kept it from her. "How can I be angry at him when he gave up decades of his life for me?"

Archie looks her steady in the eyes and tells her, "You get to be angry at whomever you choose, Regina. It was your life, too."

Her tears well up and spill, two of them slipping down her cheeks as she blinks, and she presses her lips together hard and wipes them away.

" _My life_ kept them in a sham marriage for twenty years," she says. "Their whole marriage was a lie."

"A lie they have chosen to keep and continue living in. That is not your fault, Regina."

"But he only stayed because of _me_ ," she insists. It _is_ her fault.

"But you said yourself that he could have left years ago, when you left home, yet he didn't," Archie counters her. "That was his choice. You were no longer a factor."

"That doesn't make me feel any better," she admits, blinking rapidly and managing to quell her tears even when she tells him, "I feel… toxic."

Archie leans forward slightly in his seat, shaking his head and asking her, "Why? Why do you think you're toxic?"

"Because she did this awful thing to him, put him in this terrible position just to cover up the awful thing that _she_ did, and she made me a part of it. She's used me as a chess piece with him my whole life; I'm a particularly valuable _pawn_ to her."

And it burns. God, it burns so much, to know that her mother doesn't see her as a precious, wonderful child, but as something she can twist and use and manipulate to get her way. To excuse her own sins by preying on Regina's.

"That doesn't make you toxic, Regina, that makes you a victim," Dr. Hopper insists. "Unless you knew and were helping your mother with this manipulation, you have done nothing wrong." She glances up at him and he repeats, "There is nothing wrong with you."

Regina laughs bitterly, and tells him, "There's plenty wrong with me and we both know it. And so much of it is her fault, and it makes me livid – that she could have said she would tell people it was him. That _he_ was the reason I was in so much therapy, when she was the one who made me so neurotic I starved myself sick. _She_ did that. Not him."

"You know that. Your father knows that," Archie insists. "Those are the threats of a desperate woman."

Regina makes a face at that. _Desperate_ is one word for it. _Soulless_ is probably more apt.

"I'm not excusing her," Archie continues. "What she did was wrong, threatening your father in that way was wrong – especially to use you as a pawn in the way she did. But I get the feeling there is more to your anger than this. Yes, it's a horrible thing and your life may have been different in a hundred different ways if your father had left and taken you with him, but it's too late for that now, you're past that. So what else is bothering you? What's truly keeping you up at night?"

She thinks of the nightmares. Thinks of Robin strapped to a table, and how badly she'd wanted to run back to his house and make sure he was still alive, and breathing, and not hating her.

The memory of her sleepless night reminds her that she'd left her journal on her nightstand back home, and she curses herself silently. She'd filled page upon page that night, had scribbled down every thought she could think of that was keeping her up, clogging her mind, holding her hostage in her own head.

It clearly hadn't done her much good, in the long run. It's supposed to be a tool to help ease her troubled mind, to help her sort out her thoughts, but the only thing that's been able to give her even a little bit of release in the last few days was her night with Robin.

She'd gone from forcing down dinner and then throwing it back up in an anxious fit to scarfing down grilled cheese and riding Robin's hand to completion, and all it had taken was a dimpled smile and some marijuana.

Such a _wonderful, healthy_ tactic for maintaining her mental health…

But it's probably better than the times she deals with stress by skipping meals, no matter how temporary she forces those starving impulses to be.

Regina decides to go with that, telling Archie, "I have unhealthy coping mechanisms for stress, and I blame her."

"Okay, that's a good place to start," he encourages. "Can you tell me a bit more about that?"

Regina sighs, and tells herself to be _honest_ , truly honest, because hiding her struggles in this regard does her no real favors.

She drops her gaze to Pongo, and tells Dr. Hopper, "I just remember thinking—back then, when everything was so terrible—that maybe someday when I was older I wouldn't feel this way. Like food was an enemy, like a meal with my mother was a battle. I thought someday I would feel like I had things under control. And you know, for a long time, I did. But lately…" Regina exhales heavily, frowning as she admits, "I'm struggling—with so many things. And I just… want a break. I want a week to not think about my mother, or my asshole coworker, or my neighbor that I keep kissing. But you don't get breaks from life, so I'm stuck having to find things that make me feel safe and in control, and those things are unhealthy. Or they're the opposite of safe and in control; they are _losing_ control and pretending it's safe until you come to your senses and realize what an idiot you are."

"What makes you feel safe, Regina?" Archie asks, and the intensity of Regina's reaction surprises even herself.

Tears spring to her eyes, blurring Archie out before she has to look away. She presses her lips together firmly and tries to force the tears back, focusing hard on Pongo as he gives a little whine and noses into her touch.

Regina rubs one hand over his snout, the other over his belly as she sniffles and stays silent. Her throat feels thick, tight, and she swallows hard to push down this knot of emotion she can't speak around.

"Take all the time you need," Archie tells her. "It's okay."

She nods, and hitches a breath, and _God_ , she wishes she'd gotten more sleep – then maybe she could have gotten through this session without all these random urges to cry.

But then, this isn't random, not really. She _knows_ where these tears have clawed their way up from. She knows exactly what corner of her heart finds that question so bruising.

And she knows exactly what her therapist will have to say about it, because they've been here before.

She'll try to tell him that she can't have what she needs to feel safe, he'll try to tell her that she's over-inflating the threat her mother poses – although _how_ he could say that after everything she's just told him is beyond her.

And she's just…. too tired for that today.

So she takes a deep breath and leans forward to grab a tissue from the box on the table in front of her, dabbing at her cheeks and blowing her nose, and telling herself to suck it up.

"I don't want to answer that question," she rasps, and then she realizes he's probably just going to ask her _why_ she doesn't want to answer it, so she switches her response to a hasty, "Vegetables."

Dr. Hopper isn't amused. He looks at her over his glasses, taps his pen on his pad, waits.

"It's true," she tries to insist with a shrug and a little clearing of her throat. "There's nothing safer than celery, Archie. It's all fiber and water, you can eat it til your jaw gets tired and not feel an ounce of guilt. It's very safe."

"Somehow I doubt that's what you were referring to when you said 'things that make you feel safe and in control and those things are unhealthy,'" he tells her dryly. "What could be unhealthy about celery besides its blatant lack of nutrients? What actually makes you feel safe, Regina? Why are you afraid of allowing yourself to feel safe?"

"I'm not," Regina defends, because she _isn't_ afraid of feeling safe. She's _not_ , it's just that… her current safe place is inappropriate and impractical.

"And I quote: 'they're the opposite of safe and in control, they are losing control and pretending it's safe until you come to your senses and realize what an idiot you are.' Why do you think you're an idiot, Regina?" Dr. Hopper asks, and then he tacks on, "And don't think I haven't noticed you aren't wearing your rubber band, because I have."

Regina feels an adrenaline-fueled flush under her skin, her eyes widening slightly as she swallows.

Shit. Caught.

She fights the urge to run her thumb over the bare skin of her wrist (balls the Kleenex up in her hand instead), and curses the way she stutters slightly as she says, "I-I took it off for brunch. You know my mother would have noticed."

She hates when she gets caught shirking her homework. Hates the way it makes her feel like a scolded child. She's a grown adult, it's _her_ choice whether she snaps a rubber band on her wrist or not. She doesn't _have_ to do any of this if she doesn't want to. She shouldn't feel so damn guilty about it.

But she does, and it doesn't help when he points out: "Brunch was three days ago."

"I— forgot to put it back on," she lies. She didn't forget, she chose not to. And he'll get that out of her, no doubt, if they stay on this topic, so she veers them back to where they'd started and says, "And I feel like an idiot because I always knew Mother was a horrible person, but I never imagined she would do what she did to my father. That she would stoop that low. Which means I am right, and I am dangerous, and I can't be with him. But you're just going to tell me that I'm wrong now. So. Idiot."

So much for not talking about the issue of Robin and her mother.

For a moment, Archie just looks at her, his mouth pursed ever so slightly. Then he digs a hand into his pocket, withdraws a rubber hand and holds it out for her. She'd say he _offers_ it to her, except there's no offer here. It's an expectation. A re-issuing of the homework she'd so callously refused to do.

Regina scowls at him, but reaches over anyway, tugging the little rubber loop from his fingers and slipping it around her wrist. And then she waits for his inevitable commentary on her surely-going-to-be-called-ridiculous fears.

But he doesn't answer.

He doesn't answer, he just stares at her until her brow furrows, then he nods his head pointedly at her wrist.

Jesus, he's got to be kidding. Now?

But of course he's not kidding, and of course now, because she called herself an idiot, and what better moment for a fucking lesson? Regina rolls her eyes and tugs the rubber band taut – very taut – letting it snap back hard enough that she winces at the sharp sting.

There.

It's done.

She looks at him again, offering up an expression that says very clearly, _Carry on..._

Archie gives her a little nod, and asks, "By 'him' do you mean Robin?"

Regina's only answer is a lift of her brows, a widening of her eyes. A silent sort of, _Yes, who else?_

"We'll come back to that in a moment," he tells her, and oh, she just bets they will. "You said you couldn't have imagined your mother stooping that low, but how does that make you dangerous?"

 _How could it not?_ she thinks.

What she says is a mildly exasperated, "He doesn't care. I think he's crazy enough to think I'm worth it. He doesn't understand that she's insane. And how could he because _who does these things_? But the answer is apparently 'my mother,' so I'm dangerous for him. Because he just had to rob _them,_ he couldn't have stolen from some other rich family."

"That still doesn't explain why _you_ are dangerous."

"To him."

"Robin is an adult, he's capable of deciding what he can handle."

"He doesn't know her," Regina insists. "I do. He doesn't know what she's capable of; I couldn't tell him."

She wants him to know. She wants _someone_ to know, to understand what she's going through and just fucking _be_ there for her – and Robin would be, if she asked. She knows he would, and _that_ is where those stupid tears are coming from. Because if their circumstances were different, she wouldn't have to weather this storm alone.

"Hasn't your mother kept you from enough things in your life that make you happy?" Archie asks her, interrupting her thoughts. "Things that keep you healthy and make you feel safe? Are you willing to let her take this from you as well just because you're afraid?"

Her gaze snaps up to him at that, her temper rising along with it.

"Can you please stop talking about this like it doesn't matter? Like I'm being ridiculous?" she snaps. "I get enough of that from her. You want to know why I can't sleep? It's because I keep dreaming that he's dying and it's _my fault_." Her voice breaks over the words, those stupid tears surfacing again, and warbling, "That I ruin his life."

"Would your mother remember him?" Archie asks her again, calmly, and she hates that he's always so fucking _calm_.

"I don't _know,_ " she shoots back. "But I am terrified – terrified – that she will. That I will convince myself it's all fine, that it's going to be fine, and then I will be wrong. And he will suffer because he cares about me. Just like Daddy."

She forces herself to take a deep breath in, and a slow breath out, blinks her tears into submission again as Dr. Hopper asks, "What about your father? Is this something you could discuss with him?"

"I don't know," she mutters. "What if _he_ remembers?"

"Do you think he would do something about it?"

Regina frowns. Her anxious nerves tell her that yes, of course he would, but this is Daddy they're talking about. Daddy who sat by while Mother tormented their own daughter and did nothing. Daddy who could have walked away to protect Regina, and didn't.

He _stayed_ to protect her, instead. Would he overlook Robin's past transgressions to protect her, too?

It's not like anyone had gotten truly hurt by Robin's actions – not Mother and Daddy, anyway. And taking it out on Robin _now_ , so long after the fact… That would hurt Regina.

So maybe he… wouldn't. Who knows? Maybe he'd say nothing like he did about Mother's fucking affair, and her fucking blackmail.

But then again, he might also call the police and have Robin thrown in jail. How can she really _know_ without asking and risking everything?

Archie is watching her expectantly – not judgmentally, just with that face he sometimes has when he thinks he knows an answer to a question he's asked her. She resents that stupid expression.

"Can we talk about something else?" she asks him, shifting slightly in her seat and disturbing the dog.

"It's your time, Regina," Dr. Hopper reminds.

And because he's right, and it is, she wastes a little bit of that time by watching as Pongo resituates himself, moving a little further down the couch but staying within arms reach, his tail thumping softly against the leather.

And then she tells her therapist, "We can talk about Robin and feeling safe, and my coping methods. And we can talk about Mother and what she did. But I don't want to talk about Robin and my mother; it's too confusing."

"Okay," Archie agrees with a nod. And then he asks, "What do you want to talk about, Regina?"

"I don't know," she shrugs wearily. "I figured we'd talk about my parents this week. I thought I'd get a week off from talking about Robin. I wasn't…" It's the beginning of an admission she's not sure she wants to make, but since they're on the topic of inappropriate things that make her feel safe, she stumbles her way through the rest of the confession: "...planning on telling you about… what happened... with... him."

"I see," he says easily. No judgment, no guilt. He just asks, "Would you like to tell me, after all?"

"Not really," she says, "But you asked about bad decisions that make me feel safe, so…" Regina shrugs and admits what they both probably already know: "He's the bad decision. I had an anxiety attack on Sunday night. I'd been trying to hold it together all day for Henry, but then he went to bed, and it all just… came right up to the surface. And I couldn't breathe, and I couldn't get a handle on it on my own, so… I went next door to Robin's. He helped me calm down and then… we… I guess 'hooked up,' for lack of a better term."

"You slept with him?" Archie asks, clarifying.

Regina shakes her head, denying with a fervent, " _No._ No, I'm not that far gone. We just" —she winces, guiltily— "smoked a joint and got a little handsy with each other."

Archie's brows rise slightly, as he says, "I see…"

He's trying _not_ to judge her, she can see that, but he must. He has to, because who wouldn't? Professional demeanor or not, who can hear _that_ and not judge?

Regina feels compelled to explain herself, telling him, "He'd been smoking before I got there; I noticed, he offered – he thought maybe it would help with the anxiety, and I… I was desperate. I just wanted something to make my brain stop racing. Even when I could breathe again, it felt like it was just a stopgap, and I don't do drugs – that's not… me. You know that. But I thought maybe a little bit of pot wouldn't hurt anything."

Archie nods slowly, then says to her, "I would agree that smoking pot is outside your character, and while I applaud you seeking comfort when it was needed, and making decisions that focus on self-care, I am worried about the pattern of behavior you've been exhibiting over the past few weeks."

"You mean the crazy pattern?" Regina asks, wryly.

He's quick to reassure her, "You're not crazy."

Well, that's a relief.

But he's not done, continuing, "However, you do seem to be acting more erratically than you usually do, and while you are making strides in certain areas, you seem to only be doing so in ways that allow you to punish yourself, or think badly of yourself afterward."

His observation winds something up in her middle, and her arms wrap protectively around it, tension winding up her spine, down over her shoulders and into her fists, as she says what they both already know: "I'm messing up. I'm messing everything up. I'm a mess."

"Rubber band," he reminds gently, and she frowns and gives it a little snap.

He doesn't say anything else, though, so...

"I just… He makes me feel… less loud?" Regina explains, fiddling absently with the tissue in her hand, crumpling it again and again as she talks. "If I can forget all the reasons why it's a terrible idea, spending time with him is… great. I can be honest with him, and… I'm comfortable." She frowns a little, admitting, "Maybe _too_ comfortable. And then I want things that we… shouldn't have. I've had a really terrible week, and he's reached out to me a few times – and I want to reach back, but I don't want to use him like this, I don't want to be that person. So I've been trying not to put us in another situation where I'm going to want to use him to make myself feel better again."

He deserves better than that. Better than this back-and-forth she isn't strong enough to resist.

"It's not using him if he's a willing, informed participant," Dr. Hopper tells her, and Regina smirks ruefully.

"That's what he says," she drawls, and then Dr. Hopper is smirking too.

"Sounds like a wise man," he says.

He would think so.

Regina just lets that smirk warm into a smile and says, "He's an idiot. And anyway, I told him I wanted a friend right now. Not a make out buddy."

"Then what seems to be the problem?"

"Well, it turns out I might have lied," she confesses.

"Oh?" Archie smiles at her. "What do you want then?"

It doesn't take Regina long to come up with an answer, but she feels a little bit silly and vulnerable (she can hear her mother calling her weak and stupid), when she answers, "I want to not feel so lonely. I don't know why this thing with my parents is hitting me so hard, but it is. And I just feel very… isolated. And raw. And confused. Which is usually when I throw myself at Robin."

"From what you've said he seems to be very willing to catch whatever you… throw," Archie observes, and she laughs a little at his phrasing before nodding in confirmation.

"Oh, he is," she tells him. _Willing_ is an understatement. "Sunday is a perfect example of that. I just feel like it's unfair to him. Shit or get off the pot, right?"

"What does he think about that?" Archie asks her. "Have you talked to him about it?"

"Yes. We talked a little, before. When we kissed at Henry's party." It feels like much, much longer than a week and a half since they had that conversation. "He said he feels like I keep moving the goalposts on him. That he wants to be what I need, whatever that is, but it's hard to figure that out when things keep changing between us. That's when I told him I wanted to be friends."

"But is that really what you want?" Dr. Hopper asks her gently.

"I thought it was, but clearly my actions say otherwise. It only took me a week to be… far more than _friendly_. And I started it on Sunday; he didn't make a move, it was all me." It feels like someone else – that person who sat on his couch and told Robin very succinctly that she had every intention of hooking up with him. But it was her. Her in a desperate, needy mood, but her nonetheless. Screwing everything up for them – again. "I thought friendship was what was best – and I still do think it's best – safest, and smartest – but ever since I talked to my father, all I've wanted is… some kind of comfort. And he's right there, so willing, and… caring, and…"

All she can think of is the gentle pressure of a kiss on her splitting temple, the warmth of his hand on her back, the way he'd eased down the zipper of her skirt without asking but without demanding. But that's not _friendship,_ who is she trying to kid?

It's not friendship, it's more than that, and it's something she _craves._ She doesn't know a better way to make Dr. Hopper understand what she's going through than to tell him, "I had a migraine on Monday, and he offered to take Henry for the evening, and he checked on me, and practically tucked me in. Rubbed my back while I threw up, and brought me water, and... And I feel guilty because it's such a _relief_ to have someone who'll… who wants to…" That ache in her middle is back, the tears back with it, and she wipes away the one that slips out.

She _hurts_. This hurts, and it sucks, and she hates it, and she's _tired_ of it. Just _tired_ , period.

"Maybe it's worth having an honest conversation with Robin?" Dr. Hopper suggests to her, reaching forward and grabbing her a fresh tissue from the box. "See what you both want, what you're capable of giving?"

She takes the tissue and confesses, "I don't know if I have anything to give right now. I feel like I'll just… leech."

"I think you have a lot more to offer than you give yourself credit for."

"Doesn't feel that way," Regina tells him quietly. "I feel depleted. And all I truly want – this is going to sound pathetic – but all I really want is to lay down with him for a little while, and be quiet. And I know that if we were alone like that again, it probably wouldn't stop there, but... I can't stop my brain, I can't stop _thinking_ and it's driving me crazy. I just want some peace and quiet, and some comfort, and to not feel so alone."

Her voice thins on the word _alone,_ and Pongo's ears perk up, his head tilting back until it presses against her thigh. Regina drops one hand down to the smooth warmth of his neck, and scratches appreciatively.

"And you don't think he'd be satisfied with that?" Archie questions. "Do you feel like he would pressure you or have expectations?"

"No."

"Then what's stopping you? That seems like a fairly reasonable request."

Regina frowns. "It's weak. And stupid. And what am I supposed to do? Call and say 'Hey, wanna come over for a good cuddle? And, oh, let's just not mention the fact that I threw myself at you three days ago.'"

She can't do that. He'd say yes in a heartbeat, but she can't _do_ that. Maybe _because_ he'd say yes in a heartbeat.

"The desire for human contact is not weak, Regina," Archie tells her. "In fact, the willingness to admit that you need it, to vocalize your own needs and desires is incredibly healthy, especially in the context of a relationship. Or in this case a friendship that occasionally wades into the waters of relationship, then backs back out when it gets cold feet."

She makes a face at 'cold feet,' but lets it go, telling him, "But it feels needy. And I am not used to feeling needy. I've taken care of myself and Henry for eleven years."

"You have, and you've done an excellent job," he compliments, and then he catches her gaze and asks her earnestly, "What's the harm in letting someone take care of _you_ for a change?"

"It feels weak," she tells him, shaking her head and saying, "I'm not… I'm not a child who needs to be coddled. I'm an adult. I can deal with my own problems; I've been doing it since Daniel died, and I've been just fine."

More or less. Most of the time.

"Yes. But even adults need comfort," Archie insists. "There is nothing weak about that."

Before she has a chance to answer, the old clock chimes its melodic early warning. They're down to their last five minutes, and she feels better for having told someone about her parents, but now there's the issue of Robin to sort out.

She sighs, and tries to focus, to milk these last few minutes of every bit of insight she can glean from them, asking, "So you think I should… reach out? To Robin?"

"I think it's worth a conversation," Archie tells her plainly. "I have a feeling Robin will see the situation a little differently from the way you're twisting it."

Regina scowls and defends, "I'm not _twisting_ anything."

"Constructing? Worrying over?" Archie suggests, and then he smiles a little and urges, "Pick an adjective."

She'd think it was a rhetorical suggestion if she didn't know him so well, but he will actually want an adjective from her. A self-assessment of sorts. So she goes with, "Stressing."

Archie nods, and writes something on his notepad as he suggests, "Maybe you need a little time with Robin to unwind a bit of that stress. Consensual, honest, mutual de-stressing. Without all that guilt you keep attaching to it."

Regina looks at him for second, then says, "I feel like you just prescribed me another evening with his hand down my pants."

Archie chuckles at that, shaking his head and assuring her, "I simply offer suggestions, it's up to you how you… handle their execution."

She lifts a brow at 'handle,' but just says, "I think I've had enough honesty for one week. But a chance to unwind does sound nice. Maybe sans… handling." Not that _handling_ doesn't sound nice, because it does. But it doesn't sound _wise_. And besides, "I just don't know when we'd find the time. He works nights, and when he's not working he has his son. I don't want to keep sneaking around when the kids are asleep, it feels… dirty. Like we're hiding something shameful, instead of just… whatever this is."

"I'm sure you'll be able to work something out," Archie tells her. "And as far as honesty, do I need to remind you what we talked about at the start of the session? The decades of dishonesty between your parents?"

As if she could forget.

Regina's eyes roll heavenward for a moment as she snarks, "Well. Luckily for Robin, I'm not married to him. I think you're allowed to keep some feelings from the person you have a perpetually undefined relationship with, don't you?"

"Wouldn't you rather be honest, if a bit uncomfortable, than continue to complicate things with more half-truths and miscommunication?"

She dials the snark up another notch to tell him, "Robin says he's fine with complicated."

"But are you?" Archie asks, not rising to the bait of her sass. He brings her right back down and questions, "Honestly?"

"No," Regina has to admit. "I hate it. I like things that make sense. Things I can control. Which, right now, is nothing."

Not him, not her family, not even herself. Not this week.

At least it doesn't feel that way, but Dr. Hopper is reminding her, "You are in control of your life, Regina. You can decide who you date and who you don't. You can decide how, or when, or if you talk to your parents. You get to choose where you work and what you do in the evenings, what you and Henry have for dinner. You have control."

"It doesn't feel like it right now," she tells him, and she feels that stupid tightening in her chest, in her throat. "I have anxiety, and stress, and confusion, and… I need a break. I just…" Her chin quivers, her eyes flooding again as she manages, "I need a break. I can't feel this way every day."

"Let's see how this week goes," he suggests, making another note on his pad as he tells her, "If you're still feeling the same levels of stress and anxiety we can talk about renewing the script for your anti-anxieties as well. But I'd like to see how you get on with the sleeping pills first, to see if getting proper rest helps."

Regina lets out a heavy breath, not at all thrilled at the idea of going back on her meds. It's been _years_ since she had to take anti-anxiety medication with any sort of regularity. But she nods, and concedes, "Alright. Not the dailies, though – I should be able to handle all of this. It's just that it's all happening at once; it's one thing after another with no letdown, and I'm so tired..."

"We'll take things one step at a time," Dr. Hopper assures her. "I'll call in the renewal for your sleep meds first, we'll see how that goes, and if we need to talk about the anti-anxiety meds we can go over the possible options when we get to that point. Does that sound fair?"

"Yeah," she agrees. "That works."

"Okay. I want you to keep the rubber band until our next session. And actually use it this time." He reaches into his pocket and fishes out several more – does he keep a damn Staples store in there, or something? "And I'll give you a few extra, so you don't have to worry about it breaking, or getting lost, or _forgotten_ on your dresser."

Regina scowls, but takes the extras anyway – punishment for her slacking this week. She deserves this.

But it wasn't that she just refused to do it, it was more than that, it was…

"I didn't want… her… to see it," she tells Archie again, hoping that he can at least understand _that_. "And then I— I've had a spectacularly bad week. I finally told Sidney how I felt in no uncertain terms, and he's been a petulant manchild ever since, and it's been a busy week on top of that, plus the migraine, and mixed feelings about Robin. I just—"

"Regina," he interrupts gently, and only then does she realizes the way she's cracking her knuckles one by one. "Breathe."

She breathes in until her lungs are full, then out, imagining all the anxiety leaving with her breath. It helps, a little.

Enough that she sounds calm when she tells him, "I kept looking at it on my dresser every morning, and thinking 'maybe tomorrow.'"

"It doesn't do you any good on the dresser."

"I know that," she tells him. "And I'm not going to be seeing my mother for…" The rest of her natural life, preferably. "A long time. So… I'll be a good little patient now; I'll use it. I just needed a few days, and honestly – I needed _this._ "

Archie smiles at that – one of his genuine, pleased smiles. One of the proud ones. "I'm glad you found it helpful," he says to her, and then he glances at the clock and tells her, "Unfortunately, that's all the time we have for today."

Regina nods, and murmurs, "I can't decide if that felt like a fast hour, or a very, very long one," as she reaches forward to grab her purse off the table. "Do you still want me weekly?"

"For now, yes. I'd like to monitor your anxiety."

Right. The meds.

"Next Wednesday is Henry's first day of school," she tells him. "It's not a good day for an appointment. Maybe after Labor Day? We can re-assess the anxiety then, unless something comes up in the meantime."

"You have my work number, you know you can always call if something comes up," Dr. Hopper assures her. And then he says, "Marco and I have plans to take a vacation starting on Thursday, so the change in appointments works fine. Talk to Belle on the way out and she can set up your appointment for after Labor Day."

"Great. Thank you." She shoulders her purse, gives Pongo a final scratch behind his ears, and says, "Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to get out of your hair and go pour myself a very large glass of wine."

Dr. Hopper grins, and tells her, "I think that sounds like a fine idea," rising at the same time she does and walking her toward the office door. "I hope Henry has a good first day of school, and you're able to enjoy the holiday."

"You, too. Enjoy your vacation."

She'll be enjoying a weekend of sitting at home fretting about her son an hour away with his uncle. How lovely.

They're two steps from the door when Dr. Hopper reaches out a gentle hand to her arm, stopping her with a kind, "And Regina?"

She turns, asks, "Yes?"

He looks her in the eye, offers her a little smile and insists, "It's going to be okay."

She winces through a smile, shakes her head, and points out, "You said that last time, and it's only gotten worse."

He nods, and tells her, "It takes time. Allow yourself that time. Be patient with yourself."

She smiles wryly, and says, "Patience has never really been my strong suit. But I'll try."

**.::.**

She thinks about her conversation with Archie the whole way home. Thinks about it while she looks over Henry's school supply list one more time to make sure they don't need to pick anything else up this week, and while she forces down a tuna-and-avocado lettuce wrap for dinner. (She shouldn't have to force it—it's perfectly good food and she's hungry—but she's considering actually _doing_ it, actually reaching out to Robin and asking for what she wants, and the anxious nerves have her stomach a sour, jittery mess.)

She thinks about it after she tucks Henry into bed, nearly picks up her phone twice, but what would she even say?

So she runs for a while. Thirty-five minutes on a level-seven incline to work off some of that nervous energy, then she showers off the sweat. She puts on pajamas, and does a luminizing face mask, and thinks about the idea of calling him for 14 of the 20 minutes.

And then she goes to bed. Or to her bedroom, anyway. She doesn't take the lone Sonata in the bottom of the bottle, clenches the plastic in her fist and nearly throws it out. There will be a new one waiting for her at the pharmacy by the office tomorrow. She can go one more night on her own. She can try one more time to self-soothe.

And if that doesn't work, well… maybe, then she'll call.

So she goes to bed, climbs in with a book and all the lights out except the one on her nightstand. And she reads the same page four times, her mind a whirring mess of _Robin_ , and _affair_ , and the things her mother would have accused her father of, and _Sidney_ , and work, and _Robin_.

Damnit.

She gives up on the book. Snaps it shut, and drops it back to her bedside table.

Maybe she'll just try to sleep. Really try. Maybe an hour of talking things out has sorted her brain enough for it to actually settle down. (She does not feel well-sorted. She still feels clogged up, bogged down, but she shuts the light off anyway, scoots herself down under the covers until she's comfortable and then closes her eyes.)

She tries counting.

Backward from two hundred and fifty. Something to focus on, something meant to lull and relax her. But she hits _one_ with that pit of anxiety still lodged firmly in her belly. So she reaches for her phone before she can talk herself out of it, flicks over to her messages and then simply stares at their last exchange.

It takes another full minute to figure out what to say to him, and in the end she settles on an incredibly lame: _How is work tonight? Good tippers?_

She regrets it as soon as she hits Send, her heart clogging her throat with nerves, and she has to force herself to breathe slowly. A tiny, traitorous part of her wonders if maybe Dr. Hopper is right about starting the anti-anxiety medication again. It's been years, _years_ , but she can't stand this clawing, clenching, can't-breathe feeling. She should have just taken the expired Sonata and gone to bed. Medicated herself to sleep and been done with it.

It's not too late to do that now, she supposes...

Her phone buzzes in her sweaty palm, and she bites her lip as she reads. _Shit tippers but at least they're not all wankers_

Regina smiles a little in spite of herself, thumb hovering over the keyboard. She's not witty tonight, not flirtatious. Her brain is overtaxed and under-rested and anxious to boot. She's not up to her usual standard of repartee.

He texts again before she can come up with anything, a simple: _You're up late_

She is. It's after midnight. Not that midnight is _late_ , per se, but she gets his meaning – it's a late hour for texting, and her first message was incredibly idiotic. So he must know she's not just texting for the hell of it.

 _Can't sleep_ , she admits.

_Do you need me to call and sing you a lullaby? ;)_

"Yes," she murmurs pitifully into the dark, grateful that nobody can hear her.

God, she's stupid. Stupid and weak, and—she grits her teeth and snaps that stupid rubber band, curses Archie Hopper, and then does it again.

Then she texts Robin back: _At this point, I'll try anything. Haven't slept much all week_.

He doesn't answer right away, and she sets her phone on her chest while she waits for his reply – _hopes_ for his reply. Stares up at the dark of her ceiling, and starts counting up from zero, just for something to do that isn't fretting over everything.

The vibration of his response startles her a little, and she lifts the phone again, blinking against the brightness of the screen before she squints a little to read it.

_I'm sorry luv. Everything ok?_

_No. Lots on my mind. My parents._ She hits Send, then adds, _Other things_ , sends again and adds, _Had therapy tonight so my brain is busy._

_Shouldn't therapy quiet things down a bit?_

_In a perfect world, yes. In mine? Not lately._

There's a lull again, a few minutes that pass in silence, and then he's asking her _Anything I can do to help?_

Oh, boy. Okay. There's her opening. Wide open, like a barn door, and all she has to do is walk through it. Just type the words, and let him say yes, and she can have the thing she thinks she shouldn't need. She hears Archie in her head ( _The desire for human contact is not weak_ and _Vocalizing your needs and desires is incredibly healthy_ ) and tells herself this is self-care.

Then she types each word carefully, deliberately, deleting and rewriting each bit several times before she ends up with: _Yes. I could really use a friend right now. Can you come over?_ As soon as she sends it, she decides it's crappy, and vague, and tells herself to just say what she means already, rushing through _I think I need to hug it out_ and pressing Send before she can erase it.

And then she waits, listens to her heartbeat loud in her ears, her throat.

His answer has warm relief flooding her chest: _You know I'm always good for that babe,_ followed quickly by _But I'm not off til 2_

_I'll be up. I haven't slept all week, except for Migraine Monday. I can't shut my brain off, it's torture._

_Sounds like_ , he messages back. And then, _Is it a good idea for us to be alone that late when you're not feeling yourself? I don't want to take advantage_

_You're not. I'll behave. And it's therapist-approved. I've been told to not feel guilty for wanting human contact when I'm under stress as long as we're on the same page._

_What page are we on?_

She stares at his question for a while, wishing she knew the answer. She wants to say 'friends,' but she's been saying that for weeks and she's not sure anymore if it's true or just… an excuse, like Dr. Hopper seems to think it is.

But she owes him an answer of some kind, so she shoots back an entirely random: _23?_

_Lol Okay luv, what book then?_

_Incredibly Complicated Relationships for Dummies?_

_Clever. Seriously tho - which guy do you need me to be when I get there? The keep it in my pants guy or the put it in YOUR pants guy?_ (A moment later she gets another: _Pardon my bluntess)_

_Ha. Ha. I'm not asking for sex, but I could desperately use a back rub. Or just to be close to someone for a while. I've been upset all week and I don't want to be alone again tonight. I need someone to talk to who isn't my son or my therapist._

She hits Send before she can chicken out, and then admits: _And I'm mortified to be saying this to you right now, just so you know._

_Why? Its just me, luv_

_It doesn't make me sound pathetic?_

_Nah. Everyone wants to be petted now and then, yeah?_

_God, that's exactly what I want. To be petted. How sad is that? I want to curl up like a kitten and get belly rubs and head scratches until I purr and fall asleep. If you can get me to sleep before 3 I'll owe you. I'll cook for you. Anything. Seriously. I'm so tired and my brain won't stop._

_I shall make it my mission, milady. And u never owe me but I'll never turn down your cooking,_ he tells her. _Try to get some sleep, kitten_. _I'll text when I get off and if you're still up I'll come by and ruffle your fur a bit_

 _I'll be up_ , she assures, and, _Thank you._

She lays there and counts and thinks and frets, tosses and turns until her phone buzzes again at half past one.

It's Robin: _Still up?_

She tells him _Yes_ and he says to give him a few and he'll come crawl in with her.

Regina tells him to use the spare key, asks if he remembers her alarm code (he does). And then she lays and waits, looks at his message again, at _crawl in with you._ She'd figured they'd end up on the sofa when he got here, but if he does manage to get her to sleep, they're probably better off here. In bed. Together.

Suddenly she's realizing just why he asked if this was a good idea.

In an effort to make the whole thing just a little less intimate, she slips out from under her covers, pulls them up in a half-assed attempt at bed-making, then leaves her room and pads across the hall to the guest room. There's a soft, fleecy blanket in there that she grabs. They can lay under that if they're cold. On top of her covers. Not _in_ bed, just _on_ bed. (Who is she even kidding?)

She's on her way back to her room when she hears keys in her front door.

Regina frowns. He shouldn't be here yet, it's not even two. She creeps quietly to the top of the stairs, and peers down. Sure enough, it's Robin (who else would it be?); she watches as he eases the door shut and turns the bolt again, silences the softly beeping alarm before it can blare, and then toes off his shoes.

He startles a little when he finally notices her standing at the top of the steps (he's halfway up by then, reaches for the banister, and then shakes his head a little, laughs softly). She waves, like an idiot, and stands there clutching her blankie like a child. God, she _is_ pathetic.

She shrinks into herself a little bit, is about to tell him to forget it, it's fine, she's fine, she's just being stupid, but then he's on that creaky step, and then the landing; he reaches for her as soon as she's within proximity, and she never gets the words out. She never gets the words out, because the moment he slides warm fingers along her elbows, curls them there and steps toward her to close the gap between them, she feels her throat seize, her eyes burn.

Strong arms draw her into a warm hug, and the dam bursts, tears she should have seen coming surging up to the surface as her shoulders begin to shake.

Oh, God, this is mortifying. It's the second time in a week that she's blubbered all over him on sight, this is _mortifying_. But he's holding her tighter, flat palms rubbing smooth circles over her spine, and it's just what she's needed. Her chest twists, emotion knotting hard and messy, the tangled coil of all this junk she's been carrying around growing even more chaotic. She hadn't meant to cry, had thought maybe it was possible, at some point, if they got to talking (after all the tears in therapy, she couldn't logically rule it out), but she hadn't expected to turn on the waterworks at the first touch, and it's embarrassing.

She needs to stop it. Needs to tamp this all down.

Regina fists the blanket between them, presses her face to the cotton of his t-shirt and tries to rein herself in. She's not sobbing, at least not loudly; her hitching, choked breaths are relatively quiet, but loud in the near-silence of the house.

And she doesn't want to wake Henry, doesn't want to risk it, so she forces the tears down, down, squashes them into her belly with a practiced show of force and sucks in a shaky breath before she steps back. Or tries to, but Robin is still holding her, one hand cupping the back of her head gently as he murmurs soft words into her hair, words like _It's alright_ , and _Oh, love, I'm so sorry_ , and _I'm here now,_ and soft shushing noises.

And they're all so fucking _soothing_ , settling down right into the heart of her, easing that tangled knot, each little murmur picking at another twisted cord. So maybe she'll stay here a little while longer, lean here a little while longer, her throat still tight, a few tears managing to slip down her cheeks and absorb into soft cotton.

She lets his words wash over her, and focuses on the warmth of his shoulder, the clean-cotton smell of him. He should smell like the bar, like hops and whiskey and sweat, but he smells clean – he'd changed before he came over, she realizes. They're standing so close that she can feel the softness of his pants against her bare leg, and they're not his usual denim. He's in sweats and a plain cotton tee – ready to 'crawl in' with her, she supposes.

To curl right up with her and, what was it he had said? Ruffle her fur?

She wants that, wants that closeness, that intimacy, wants to lie down with him and spill all her painful secrets until her heart is spent and settled.

They should take this out of the hallway.

She tries to lean back again, pushing gently at his chest with her fists, and this time he lets her go. Before she can shift the blanket to free one of her own hands, his thumbs are at her cheeks, brushing away the lingering dampness as he looks at her with far too much sympathy.

"You're early," she tells him, and he smiles a little guiltily. "You said you don't get off til two."

Those thumbs fall away and she misses them terribly.

"I don't, but it was a slow night, and August said I clearly had places I'd rather be, so he let me go." She feels a little burn of embarrassment at the idea that August likely thinks he left for a booty call, but then he's asking softly, "What can I do?" and she pushes it aside.

Regina swallows thickly and tightens her fists in her blanket, nodding back toward her bedroom and asking, "Will you just lie with me for a little while?"

It sounds pathetic, weak, all the things she thinks it should be.

But Robin just nods, and tells her, "Yeah, of course."

**.::.**

He's been in her bedroom before, several times.

Hell, he was in her bedroom _two days ago_ , but it seems different like this. By invitation, in the middle of the night.

She's left most of the lights off, only the bedside lamp on to cast a warm glow over the room. The covers are up, but rumpled, and there's a bit of a divot in her pillow where her restless head had no doubt lain while she'd waited for him to get off work.

And then there's Regina – hesitant and almost… shy?... as she shuts the door behind them and pads toward the bed, that blanket still balled up in her hands.

He hadn't been able to stop thinking about her after her texts. Or worrying about her, more accurately.

He'd known on Sunday that something had clearly gone very wrong with her mother – she wouldn't have shown up the way she had, and spent the evening with him the way she had if everything had been business as usual. And her Monday had quite clearly been shit.

So he'd made a point to text her a few times yesterday and today – just to say hello, or to try to make her laugh. She'd been… quiet. Responsive, but not eagerly so, and he'd begun to worry that he'd cocked everything all up on Sunday after all.

However sober she may have been on Sunday, she was clearly out of sorts, and he probably shouldn't have encouraged her to get high and half-naked with him. That had probably been… less than kind, in retrospect.

He'd been mulling over how to apologize for it (brooding over it, according to August) when he'd gotten her first text tonight.

He'd been right about one thing – she'd definitely been out of sorts, and it seems she still is, but at least she's not angry with him about the other night.

Just in pain, clearly – something gnawing at her insides, keeping her from sleeping, crumbling her into tears at the first touch of a good, solid hug.

And now she's leading him to her bed, in the near-dark, and he has to remind himself she'd said she wasn't asking for sex—no matter how tempting she may be in that tank top and those shorts (he's weak for her in shorts, all that leg…). She just needs some comfort, a good back rub to soothe her to sleep, and quiet her mind.

He can do that.

He can keep his hormones in check, even in the face of those bare legs, and even with the memory of her mouth wrapped around his cock still painfully, wonderfully fresh in his mind.

"Um, you can go ahead and… climb in," she tells him softly, spreading her blanket out on top of her covers. She slips underneath it as Robin moves to the other side of the bed and then follows suit, but there's a sudden awkwardness between them. A tension.

She's still sitting up, watching him pensively as he adjusts the blanket over his legs, and she tucks her hair back behind her ear in that adorable way she does when she's nervous.

He's not sure if he should be letting Regina set the pace, or drawing her in until her nerves settle down, so he just sits there uselessly for a minute until she says softly, "I almost didn't call you. I wanted to, but…"

"But?" he urges.

"I was embarrassed," she admits, her gaze flicking across the room, away from him.

"Because of the other night?"

It snaps back to him at that, caught off guard as she tells him, "No, not that," and then she frowns a little, and he knows her well enough to know she's probably thinking about that _now_ , and he feels like an arse.

He leans over until his shoulder bumps against hers and tells her, "Good. Because there's nothing to be embarrassed about."

"I wouldn't say that," she mutters, propping her elbows on her knees as she sits next to him. Her fingers weave together, her gaze straying to them as she says, "I was a mess on Sunday. It was… probably one of the most upsetting days of my life. And I've had some hard days."

Robin scowls, deeply, and asks, "What the hell did she say to you?"

Regina looks at him, smiling sadly, and telling him, "She didn't. Well, she did, but it was her usual. I could have… dealt with that. It was my father who upset me."

Robin's brow furrows, his head tilting as he asks, "Your father? That's new."

"Yeah," she scoffs. "A lot of things are new. Or, old, I guess, but new to me."

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asks her; that's why he's here, isn't it? To help her settle her mind and sleep? But then again, she'd had a whole hour of therapy to talk tonight, so why should he think talking to him would help at all, if that hadn't?

Unsurprisingly, her shoulders sag on a deep exhale, and she shakes her head. "I'm really tired. But… yeah, I think I do. Or… I want someone else to know. So it's not just me."

That awkward tension has faded, so he decides it's safe to reach out to her, his fingertips skimming her arm as he assures her, "I'm all ears, babe."

She lets out another sigh, and then turns toward him, giving his chest a little push until he gets the idea and lies down, settling his head into her pillows as she shifts to lie along his side. He lifts his arm for her, lets her cuddle into his chest, and she practically deflates against him. Air leaves her in a rush, her cheek pressing into him as one of her legs weaves between his, and for a minute, she doesn't talk. Just traces tickling patterns on his chest with her fingertip as he strokes lazily across what he can reach of her shoulders.

He presses a kiss into her hair on impulse, then wonders if maybe he shouldn't have? But she doesn't protest, doesn't seem to mind.

She draws in a breath like she's going to say something, then lets it out again a moment later in a despondent little rush, and he gives her another soft kiss and waits her out.

Finally, she tells him quietly, "I'm really sad. And I'm really angry. And heartbroken. And betrayed." Her voice wavers a little as she says, "I'm having a really bad week," her breath hitching afterward, and his heart breaks for her.

He pulls her just that little bit closer, nuzzles his nose into her hair and presses another kiss there. She wants comfort, right? To be touched. So he moves his other hand from where it rests against his belly, brings it up to wrap around her wrist, to soothe up and down her forearm. His thumb rolls over a rubber band looped around her wrist, and he frowns, but she's started to talk again.

"I'm going to give you the short version, okay?" she tells him. "I spent almost an hour talking about this, and the last three days thinking about it, and I just… I don't want to say it all again."

"S'fine," he murmurs into her hair.

"My parents got horseback riding lessons for Henry for his birthday, and my dad went with us on Sunday. We were talking while Henry was riding, about my parents and the… environment I grew up in. And he told me that my mother had an affair when I was younger, and then she blackmailed him into staying with her by saying if he tried to divorce her—she wouldn't have gotten any money, there was a prenup with a fidelity clause—so she told him that if he tried to leave her with nothing, she would tell people that he molested me. So… he stayed."

Every time he thinks he can't hate Cora Mills more, she somehow manages to prove him wrong, and this is no exception. Disgust and anger spike in his gut, rising even higher when her voice goes teary again as she tells him, "And I'm really angry about it. And I'm angry that they never told me. And I'm angry he didn't just leave her anyway and get us the hell away from her. And I can't stop thinking about it, about… everything I didn't know. How everything I knew was a lie, and… I just… I'm heartbroken. And I'm mad. And I can't sleep." She sniffles a little, more of a whining edge to her voice as she pleads, "I just want to sleep so I don't have to think anymore, but my brain won't _stop_."

Her fingers go restless against his chest, fisting lightly in the cotton as she tells him, "And I was in therapy tonight, talking about _coping mechanisms_ " —she says the word with thinly veiled derision— "and I said that I just wanted… this. To be close to someone – to you – and to not feel so alone in all of this. But I felt like it was weak, and stupid, and… embarrassing. Wanting to just… be held, and cry. But my therapist insists that wanting contact and comfort is perfectly healthy, and asking for it is… good. So here we are."

"I'm glad you called," he murmurs into her hair, and then, because she's still sniffling against him, he tells her, "And if you need to cry a little more, go right ahead. I don't mind. I'll just lie here and rub your back, and soak up all the tears, alright?"

He's not surprised when a soft sob breaks loose from her, another shaking her shoulders right after.

She lets the dam break on him, and it's all he can do to turn toward her, shifting them onto their sides and cradling her head against his shoulder as she weeps. He lets her purge it all out, and holds her close, runs his fingers through her hair and down her back, up her arm. Robin murmurs softly to her, little bits of nothing, soft assurances that it'll be alright, to let it out, that it's going to be fine, he's here now, that's it… Whatever comes to mind as she clutches at his t-shirt and has a good cry.

By the time she's cried herself out and mellowed down to shaky breaths and wet sniffles, his shoulder is damp with her tears, his neck humid from her warm exhales.

Robin doesn't say anything straight away, keeps up those slow, soothing strokes, combing through her hair, scratching at her nape. When she pulls away, the loss of her heat makes him shiver, and the sight of her—puffy-eyed and splotchy-cheeked and red-nosed—makes his heart ache.

She sits, wiping at the tears on her cheeks, and Robin asks, "Do you feel better?"

"I feel snotty," she tells him thickly, her voice stopped up and scratchy. He smiles a little at her as she reaches over and grabs a tissue from her nightstand, blowing her nose into it and then muttering, "But yes, better."

Robin lifts a hand to rub at her back, murmuring, "Good," as she finishes clearing out her nose and then tosses the tissue away.

When she looks back at him, it's with a defeated, "I just… can't believe she'd do that."

Robin scowls, and tells her, "I'm more and more certain that your mother is a heartless, evil bitch."

To his utter pleasure, she laughs, a smile cracking its way onto her face. "Yeah, you and me both," she mutters. "I was…" She glances over at him, and then away again, telling him, "When she had the affair, I was… going through some hard things – it's when I was in therapy for the first time. And our family friends knew something was wrong. It was… hard to miss, I guess."

She's dancing around it, he can tell. But he knows, so he puts her out of her misery with a quiet, hopefully understanding, "You had an eating disorder."

Regina's head swings toward him, a look of surprised vulnerability in those dark eyes.

"I… How did you…?"

"You said something about it," he tells her. "On Sunday, when we were, uh…"

"I did?" she asks, brow furrowing, and Robin nods.

"When you were talking about your mum – _only you could diet yourself into the hospital_ ," he parrots. "It… clicked. Nobody diets themselves into the hospital; that's not a diet."

"Oh," she breathes, and then she's tucking her hair back again, not meeting his gaze as she says, "I don't… remember saying that."

"You were high," he shrugs. "And ranting about your mum. Once you said it, it made sense. I already knew you were touchy about food sometimes. Or your body. I've never understood how you could not see how absolutely bloody gorgeous you are, or why you'd look at beer or pizza like they're plotting your demise. But you do."

"I'm recovered," she tells him softly. "I got treatment in high school, and I've been fine ever since. But… I have moments. Bad days. When I'm stressed, or when my mother sinks her claws in just right, it can trigger bad habits. Never like it was, just… my brain doesn't always work the way I wish it would."

She's picking at invisible lint on the blanket over her knees, still avoiding looking at him; he wouldn't even have to know her as well as he does to know the topic makes her uncomfortable.

"It's embarrassing," she murmurs, as if she's reading his thoughts.

Robin runs a comforting hand up the curved length of her spine, and tells her, "It shouldn't be."

It's the wrong thing to say, clearly.

She turns to him, eyes narrowed, a sharp, "Excuse me?" falling from her scowling lips.

Robin rushes to explain himself: "I just mean you don't have to be embarrassed about it with me, that's all. I don't… think of you any differently for knowing."

"Of course you do," she frowns. "Now you know it's a part of my history, and you'll see it in the things I do, or don't do. You'll pay more attention to what I eat, or—"

"I won't," he lies.

Regina just raises her brows at him.

"I won't," he tells her with a bit more conviction. "It's in the past, yeah?"

"Yes," she tells him firmly, a little nod to punctuate her declaration.

"Then I've no need to pay more attention, do I?" he reasons.

Regina's brows rise and fall, conceding his point silently.

And then things go quiet, silence stretching between them and becoming more and more awkward until he breaks it with a rather inappropriate question: "Anorexia or bulimia – if you don't mind me asking?"

It was the first thing that had come to mind, and he'd blurted it before realizing that it probably wouldn't help the awkwardness in the slightest.

He fully expects her to refuse to answer, but Regina just sighs and rakes her hand through her hair, telling him, "It was anorexia. Purging isn't really my style. I hate vomiting. And it makes you puffy, ruins your teeth. Mother wouldn't have approved."

"But starvation she approved of?" he questions, his utter hatred for that woman bleeding into his tone.

"She approved of results," Regina tells him succinctly. "And I don't mind you asking, but… I don't really like to talk about it. Or… use those words. Eating disorder, anorexia, bulimia… They make me feel like an after school special.

Right. He's a git. And he's supposed to be helping her relax and sleep, which this surely isn't doing.

So he gives her an out, tells her, "I'm sorry. We can talk about something else."

To his surprise, she shakes her head, tells him, "No, it's okay. Get all the questions out now, tonight. But then…"

The look she gives him is very clear – _But then drop it._

"Yeah, of course," he agrees, and then he wonders what to ask her. What he has a right to know. He doesn't truly have a _right_ to any of it, it's her story. Her struggle. But it would be a lie to say he wasn't curious, that he doesn't want to know this piece of her along with all the others. So he risks asking, "How did it start?"

She looks at him for a moment, then twists and props her pillow against the headboards, scooting back until her back rests against it and settling in.

Alright, then.

Robin follows suit as she begins to tell him, "When I was younger, Mother would… pick. When she was angry, or stressed, or I wasn't living up to her expectations, wasn't perfect, she would criticize _everything_. What I wore that day, my posture, how much I was eating. And I started… at some point…" She takes a deep breath, lets it out, and says, "When she was stressed, I ate less. It gave her one less thing to tear me down for. I couldn't control her, or her anger, or her words. But I could control me. I could control what I ate, and how much. Until I couldn't."

"Four hundred crunches a day," he murmurs, and she nods, and smiles sadly at him.

"Two hundred every morning, and two hundred every night," she tells him. "And that was just the crunches. Don't get me started on the calories. Needless to say, it got bad – very bad. But Daddy got me help, and now I'm… good. I have bad days now and then – I know it's not healthy, but… when things get stressful, I get strict. It's worst when it's her – when it's Mother. When she does what she does, and I can hear her in my head afterward. Hear every criticism, and every warning. I eat less. I skip meals, or I eat differently. It helps me… regain a sense of control when she's taken it away. But I am aware that it's unhealthy, so I only allow myself to do it for a day. I allow myself one day, and then I have to eat normally again. It's not my therapist's favorite method, but it works for me."

"It sounds… risky," he says carefully. Selective starving doesn't sound like 'recovered' to him.

She rolls her eyes a little and tells him, "He says it's a slippery slope. That indulging in unhealthy habits on bad days could increase the temptation to indulge in them on mediocre days, and then on good days." She gives Robin a look that makes her feelings on that assessment quite clear and drawls, "I tell him that if I survived losing Daniel and living for two more years with my mother without a relapse, I can survive one day of black coffee and salad every now and then."

"Well, when you put it that way," he says with a little smile, reaching for one of her hands and lacing their fingers.

"As a result, he's very keen on regulating my stress levels," she continues, and he watches her talk. Watches the shape of her lips as they move, drinks in the open honesty in her eyes when she looks his way. God, he loves this, loves her, all open with him. Giving him precious pieces of herself that he does not in any way deserve. After all he's done, he probably doesn't deserve to watch her frown and admit, "He wants to consider putting me back on anti-anxiety medication if things don't settle down for me soon."

She stares at their hands, rubs her thumb along his, and tells him, "I don't want to do it. It feels like failing. I haven't been on meds in _years_."

"It's not failing," he assures her, lifting their joined hands so he can press a kiss to her knuckle and tell her, "Plenty of people are on medication."

"Yeah, well," she mutters. "Plenty of people weren't raised by my mother. I was raised to believe that if you can't handle something yourself, that's weakness. And it has taken _years_ of therapy to break me of that thought pattern. It's… resilient."

" _You_ are resilient, love," he tells her, using his free hand to turn her chin toward him gently until he can look in her eyes. "Medication or not, eating disorder or not, you are resilient. Accepting help now and then – even if it's help from a prescription – doesn't undo that."

Regina frowns, shifting underneath the blanket until she has her knees curled up and resting against his thighs, their shoulders pressed together. She brings her free hand to the one of his she's holding and captures it between both of hers, her fingers weaving and sliding against his.

When she finally talks again, her voice is tentative – curious, but a little hesitant, as she asks, "Have you… ever been on medication?"

"No," he admits. "But my mum was, before she died. And my dad probably should have been after."

She blinks a little at that, and then her expression goes soft and sympathetic, her fingers squeezing around his; it occurs to him that for all he knows about her family, they've never once talked about his.

She asks him, "How did she die?" and he tells her, _Cancer._

"I was young, not much older than Henry when she passed."

"I'm so sorry," she whispers, her palm running up and down his forearm once. "That must have been awful."

"Mm," he confirms. _Awful_ is one word for it, yes. _Life-shattering_ possibly another. "It was. She was a nice lady. She baked a lot – and really well, you know? Nothing fancy, but we always had fresh bread, or biscuits, or…" His smile curves at the memory of being very young and eating warm bread smeared with butter, sitting at the kitchen table with his mum puttering around and cleaning up. "I can still remember the way she smelled. Her perfume – I've never been able to figure out what it was, though. Dad had all her things packed up and boxed away before I'd ever thought to look. I'll smell it every once in a while, though – pass someone on the street or something, and have the insane urge to chase the woman down and ask her what she's wearing. But I never do. Maybe it's cowardice, but… I like to think of it as mum just… saying a bit of a hello. I think if I knew, it might ruin the magic of it all. Is that silly?"

"No," she smiles. "That's not silly; it's sweet." And then her smile sours a little, and she drops her gaze to their hands again and asks, "Is it terrible that I'm jealous of you and your dead mother right now?"

 _Maybe a little,_ he thinks, but what he says is, "If I had your mother, I'd probably wish she was dead, too."

Her shoulders shake in something he can't decipher between scoff and laugh, and she says, "No, not because your mother is dead. Because… she was human. It sounds like she loved you, like you love her. Your memories of her are… homey, and warm."

"Well," he tells her, "My dad was a right bastard after she died, so don't be too jealous. He didn't know how to handle it, or me, so… I became a little delinquent, and started nicking things, and skipping classes, and generally making a nuisance of myself. And he… either told me how shit I was, or ignored me. There wasn't much in between."

"So we both have a shitty parent," she commiserates, with a smile that is somehow half-frown at the same time.

"Mm," he agrees. "At least mine has the decency to be shitty from afar, though."

"True," she sighs. And then shakes her head, and mutters, "I hate her. I try to remind myself that she's not always like this – cruel and relentless. That there have been good times over the years. But then I find out things like what my father told me, and… I hate her."

Robin draws his hand from hers and brings it up to tuck behind her shoulder, pulling her in even closer as he assures her, "I don't like her much either."

He can hear the sulky pout in her voice as she rests her head on his shoulder and says, "She ruined my brain."

And well, that just won't do. He won't have her thinking that, not when she's the woman she is.

Robin presses a kiss to her brow and tells her, "Your brain is not ruined, love."

Her chuckle in response is dry as a bone. "You're not inside of it."

"No, but you are," he says, tipping her chin up until he can meet her eyes and tell her, "And you're brilliant. You may not always feel it, but you are."

Her lips move in something that he imagines was supposed to be a smile, but it doesn't even come close, too weighted down by her misery as she says, "I don't feel it. Right now I feel pretty terrible."

He wants to make it better. Wants to stitch up all her wounds and put her to rights again, but he's not sure that he can, or even that she'd want him to try. Hell, he's not sure he even knows what the deepest cuts are.

Still, he can do his best to patch up the bits she does show him.

So he assures her, "It's temporary. The way you feel right now, did you feel that way two months ago? Six? A year?"

Regina frowns, and shakes her head.

"You're having a hard time right now – we all go through it. We all have low points. We all have times where we feel like we're not good enough, not doing enough, not right." God knows he's had them – hell, he met her during one of those times. "But those times pass. And even feeling the way you do, you're a good mum, a good friend, good at your job. You're intelligent, and witty, and capable. You're not ruined, or broken – you're just struggling."

By the time he finishes talking, there are tears shining against her lashes, and the smile she gives him is a bit weak and water-logged.

One of her hands rises to cup his jaw, her thumb brushing his cheek as she says, "I should have called you days ago. Therapy helps – immensely. There are things I hear in that room that I can't get anywhere else. But… this helps, too. Talking to you, having you encourage me when I'm not paying you hourly to do so. I don't think you know how much I appreciate that I can be myself with you, and you don't judge. I've… I've not often had that."

Job well done, then. It's what he'd wanted – to ease her burden a bit, to make her feel soothed and comfortable. And she looks it now, even if her eyes are a bit red-rimmed and still a tad puffy from earlier.

She looks sleepy, but far more settled than she had before, and he gives her a little squeeze against him, fingers stroking her arm again as he tells her, "Well, you've got it now, whenever you want it. I know things between us can be… complicated. But I'm always here for you, no matter what. All you have to do is call."

The smile she gives him is all sweetness and gratitude, her teeth sinking into her lip before she murmurs a soft, "Thank you," and settles herself down against his chest.

**.::.**

God, this was a good idea.

An incredibly good idea.

She almost doesn't want to tell Dr. Hopper just how much better she feels for having done it, lest he use it against her in his apparent crusade to get her to bend toward Robin.

Almost, but not quite.

Maybe.

She'll think on it.

Right now, though… Right now, she's going to stay just like this, curled up against Robin's side, her ear pressed just so, his heartbeat a steady, lulling _lubdub, lubdub, lubdub_ that has her eyelids growing heavier.

She might actually get some sleep tonight; imagine that.

But then he's tracing his index finger over the elastic of her rubber band, asking, "What's this?" and her heart double-knocks and wakes her right back up.

She shifts a little, and tells him needlessly, "Rubber band."

"I see that."

Regina sighs, and explains, "It's a… therapy thing. I'm supposed to snap it when I'm being self-critical. To correct my thought patterns." She waits for him to tell her that it's stupid, or useless, or… anything, really. But Robin just loops his fingers around her wrist and draws it up, up, until he can place a kiss against the inside of her wrist that is so gentle it makes her heart ache. In return, she offers him a hushed, "I hate it. It's a tool that my therapist and I don't exactly see eye to eye on."

"How so?"

"I think it's humiliating," she grumbles, staring down at the traitorous piece of rubber as Robin runs his fingertip back and forth across it. "He says that nobody knows, that it's discreet, but I feel like it's a beacon. If I'm anywhere other than at home, every time I snap it, it's like… a thunderclap. I could be alone in my office, and I'd feel like everyone knows. That they can see how messed up I am. How… broken."

His finger stops, then curls, twisting the rubber band around the tip of his finger and then drawing it up. When it's stretched and taut he untwirls it and just holds it there – poised and ready to snap, she realizes.

She's being self-critical.

Robin murmurs a soft, "You're not messed up, or broken. You're human. Struggling. We all have shit."

And it's true, she knows it's true. Objectively, she knows that. But it doesn't _feel_ true right now, and… And constantly telling herself how terrible she is isn't going to help that at all.

Regina lets loose a resigned sigh and tips her head up toward him, giving him a little nod of permission. A half-second later she feels the band snap back to her wrist with a soft pop – he's kinder to her than she is to herself; she would have snapped it harder.

"No thunder," Robin assures with a smile. "Nobody will know, babe."

"Well, let's hope they don't, because I'm stuck with it until my next session," she grouses, tipping her head back down into that comfy spot on his shoulder. "I'm in therapy time out for not using it when he gave it to me over the weekend – but in my defense, I probably would have snapped my wrist clean _off_ if I'd been using it as directed. I told him I took it off before brunch with my mother, and just… kept forgetting to put it back on." She rolls her eyes even though he can't see it, as she tells him. "So he gave me extras this time, lest I misplace, or forget, or break one."

Robin's fingertip taps at her wrist gently as he asks her curious, "He gave you extras?"

"He did. Smug bastard," she mutters. "Wouldn't want me to have an excuse to shirk my homework."

"How many extras? Enough to spare one?"

"Yeah," she frowns, tipping her head up again to ask, "Why?"

Robin shrugs, and says far too casually, "You're not the only one who thinks poorly of themselves sometimes. I think I'm a right git most of the time, so maybe I should wear one, too. For every time I'm a useless wanker."

He didn't.

He's not…

For a minute, Regina just stares, dumbstruck. He's… asking for a rubber band. For the homework she hates, he's…

Her eyes burn and ache, but she manages somehow not to cry this time. Instead, she slips the rubber band off her wrist and onto Robin's, then gives it a little snap.

"Ow!" he whispers, with a little wince.

Regina just smiles, and tells him, "You're not a useless wanker."

Robin grins, bites his lip, and teases, "That sounds very silly coming from your mouth, did you know that?"

She laughs a little, then cuddles back against his side, staring at the little loop of rubber sitting around his wrist now instead of hers. It looks less ominous there, less… embarrassing.

She really can't believe he'd taken it from her. That he'd… do this, for her.

He'll probably take it off as soon as he gets home—No, he won't. That's not Robin.

He'll keep it until she's free of hers, won't he? He'll probably even snap it from time to time, just so she doesn't feel bad. Knowing him, he'll snap it for no good reason at all. Because he's _that_ guy. (She feels that little ember of hatred for her mother burn just a little hotter and tries to shove it down deep – she's done thinking about Mother for the night.)

"So how long are we wearing this?" he asks, his hand wrapping gently around her wrist, thumb tracing the temporarily bare skin there lazily.

"Until the Wednesday after Labor Day."

"Got it."

They lie there for another minute, and she just watches him. Switches her gaze from his thumb to his wrist and back again, and then whispers, "Make me a promise."

"Mm?"

"If you see me snap it, don't… don't say anything, okay?" Regina requests. "You know now, and it's two weeks, I'm sure we'll see each other. So if I snap it, don't make a big deal about it, please?"

"I promise," he murmurs, pressing a kiss to her brow; she closes her eyes for a moment to savor it. "Not a word."

"Thank you." She tips her head up again, and tells him, "And thank you for not thinking I'm crazy – you've found out a lot about me this week, not all of it terribly flattering."

Robin's brows slide up, a disbelieving expression on his face. And then he says to her, "I was so embarrassed about blowing all our savings and losing my job that I lied about it, risked robbing a very wealthy family with a decent security system, lost everything and spent several weeks drinking about it. You think I'm going to judge you for feeling shit about yourself for a while? Or for having had an eating disorder as a child?"

Well, when he puts it _that_ way.

Regina smirks, then laughs softly and concedes, "True."

She's never been more grateful that she fell for a man who was such a mess when they met. Thank God she'd given him a second chance.

"At least the things you feel like shit about right now aren't your own actions," he reasons, his fingers finding their way into her hair and scratching lightly at her scalp in a way that makes her want to purr.

She settles for a soft hum, and an, "I'm just... so tired. I don't want to deal with any of this anymore."

"I'm supposed to be helping you sleep," he says in a way that makes it clear he feels he hasn't been helping at all, his little grimace confirming his guilt. "Why don't we scoot back down into bed properly, and let you get some rest?"

"You have helped," she assures him, with a hand settling steady over his heart. "Trust me, you have definitely helped. I feel more settled than I have all week."

To be honest, she's not really ready to let him go. She wants to enjoy this a while longer, enjoy being close to him. Having him pressed up against her. His soft touches, and soft words. His presence.

And maybe Dr. Hopper is right about this, too – about the importance of contact, the importance of touch.

Or maybe she just wants to believe that because his lips look so tempting right now. Now that she's not all amped up with stress, and can appreciate how close he is, how easy it would be to just…

"Robin…" she breathes, letting her gaze linger on his mouth. She hears his soft _Hmm?_ , and tells him, "Kiss me goodnight, for a little while."

Regina watches those lips curve, and glances up to meet his eyes, warm and amused. "For a little while, huh?"

"Mmhmm."

"You're supposed to be sleeping."

"I'm _supposed_ to be self-soothing," she corrects. "Or, letting you soothe, I guess. And… It just seems a waste to have you here, so close, and not kiss you at least a little bit. Especially when my therapist has advised me to partake in some 'mutual de-stressing' with you as a way to ease my frazzled nerves."

His shoulders shake under her, a little chuckle as he says, "He didn't."

"Oh, but he did," Regina confirms with a smile. "He's a big fan of yours – he thinks spending time with someone supportive and affectionate is good for my mental health."

"I see. Then not kissing you does sound like a terrible waste." One of his hands lifts to tuck her hair gently behind her ear, his fingertips lingering along the shell of it as he asks, "You're sure?"

"Positive," she tells him. "I don't want the last thing on my mind before I fall asleep to be how messed up everything is. I want to not think for a little while, and _then_ sleep."

"Well, then," he smirks, giving her a little push and then scooting down until the pillow is under his head rather than his back, opening his arms to her again and inviting, "Come here and let's get to forgetting."

**.::.**

This is probably a bit selfish, kissing her now, keeping her up. It's got to be half two already, and it's a work night, and he'd promised he'd try to get her to sleep by three.

But who can blame him for wanting just a little bit more of her?

It feels a bit like a bubble, this night. All this quiet intimacy, the talking, the shared secrets and whispered truths. He's not entirely sure she won't wake up in the morning and regret every word of it – it wouldn't be first time. And besides, she'd said she wanted something to take her mind off everything before she sleeps.

So.

He's going to keep kissing her.

He's going to keep his fingers tangled in the softness of her hair, and he's going to keep enjoying the warmth of her belly pressed against his, the gentle weight of her thigh draped over his hip, the faded toothpaste taste of her lazy kisses.

It's nice, enjoying a good snog with her.

Sucking gently at her bottom lip and hearing her sigh, feeling her teeth nip into his top lip.

He lied about the hair – his hand has other places to be. It wanders down her back, skims over her hip, the curve of her ass. He doesn't linger and grope the way he wants to, just cups her once and keeps on his merry way to the place he really wants to be touching: the bare length of her thigh.

It's soft and warm, and when he drags his fingertips in firm trails over it, Regina sighs and presses closer to him, her leg tightening around his hip in a way that makes him groan.

He's not here for sex, he reminds himself, even as she shifts against where he's half-hard for her.

He's just here to help her relax, to distract her, to— _God..._

Her hands have been busy too, lazy, wandering caresses along his shoulders, and his back, but it seems he needn't have worried about groping her, because she's just slid her hand down to his arse with a little moan and given him a good clutch to pull him closer.

Well, then.

Clearly, wandering hands are not an issue tonight.

Robin takes full advantage, kissing her harder, deeper, tangling his tongue with hers as he runs his hand up her thigh and grasps her rear (if he accidentally skims his hand beneath her sleep shorts to do it, well, oops).

She doesn't seem at all bothered, bites at his lip and squeezes harder at him until their hips are pressed together, grinding gently (he's more than half-hard now, that's for certain), and, well, this is rapidly devolving into something not at all… relaxing.

Unless…

He remembers the way she'd lain beside him on Sunday, the blissed-out boneless rapture of her afterglow, the sleepy blinking and satisfied sighs.

She'd said no sex, but that doesn't mean…

Robin tips his head out of the kiss and murmurs, "Do you want me to get you off, babe? Send you to sleep with a smile…"

He'll go without this time—he _will_ —he'll insist on it, because she needs to get some bloody sleep. He can live with blue balls for a bit if that's the price for pumping her full of relaxing hormones and letting her finally get a proper night in.

Regina's breath huffs out softly, a gentle laugh, and she nods, murmurs, "Yes, please," and, well, how can he deny such a polite request.

He leans forward against her – they've been on their sides, but he kisses her back, back, until he can shift on top of her and slip a thigh between hers.

It seems she has other ideas, though, because she's opening her legs wider, tugging and urging him on top of her, until he's cradled between her thighs and pressed right up against her.

"Like this," she breathes, and he nods, and grinds his cock down against her, blazes kisses down the side of her neck, warm, sucking ones that make her gasp and shift her head to the side to give him more room.

God, he loves her like this. Loves the way she is during sex (not sex, technically, but he can imagine) – eager and pleased and passionate. Loves the way her fingers grip in his hair and turn his head just a bit to the side so that _she_ can lave kisses up the column of _his_ neck, raising goosebumps over his skin and a desperate moan from his chest.

He gives her a few short, firm grinds in response, smiling when one of them has her breath rushing out against his damp neck. He finds her mouth again, then, and kisses her, levering up onto one elbow as he does and bringing his free hand in to stroke up her belly and cup one of her tits in his palm.

He can feel that warmth of her through the thin cotton, can feel the bump of a stiff nipple beneath it, and he gives her a squeeze, then seeks it out. Grasps it between his thumb and finger and gives her a few firm, rolling rubs that have her jaw dropping into their eager kisses.

"This okay?" he asks her, and she nods, scrunching her eyes shut in pleasure. He adds a little twist and she lets out this little squeak that he finds painfully sexy, then yanks his mouth back to hers and moans into heady kisses.

He keeps toying with her nipple, keeps pressing his hips into her, grinding his cock against her again and again and again, until they're both gasping and a bit desperate, the layers between her and his cock warm with friction and body heat.

When she tugs at his t-shirt, and gasps, "Off!" he goes willingly, stealing one more kiss before shifting back onto his knees and pulling it up and off, dropping it to the bed beside them.

The sight of her beneath him almost undoes him – lying there all tousled, her top rucked up by his restless hands to reveal a strip of her belly, her shorts all bunched at the top of her thighs. God, he wants to kiss those thighs. Wants to lick his way right up them and continue straight to the heaven between, and then eat her out until she screams for him.

But she'd said she wanted the grinding, wanted him _like this_ , and so he thinks maybe she's still feeling self-conscious? He can imagine why she would be with what they'd talked about, so he doesn't push – he'll let her decide when her clothes come off tonight.

If her clothes come off tonight.

Robin levers down over her again, sampling her neck as he enjoys the smooth skate of her eager palms over his bare shoulders, his upper back. He lets his kisses trail down to her collar, lets his tongue trail gently along it and chase a shiver out of her that makes him grin. And then she's wriggling her shoulders until the straps of her top slip off of them, tugging it down to bare her tits to him, and thank Christ, God, she's so bloody wonderful.

She breathes, "Can you—"

Doesn't even finish the question before he's telling her, "God, yes," and scooting down another few inches to suck her poor, neglected right nipple into his mouth. She makes this sound, this satisfied _Ahh!_ that makes his cock throb and Robin sucks harder at her, scrapes gently with his teeth. Gives her a little lick to soothe and then licks his way across to the other side to do the same.

He spends the next five minutes there, switching back and forth, kissing and sucking and nibbling at her until she's arching beneath him, clutching at his hair. He has to keep reminding himself not to grind his cock down into the bloody mattress for friction, because he's too low now to grind against her, but he's bloody _aching_ for her, for relief—his chivalrous blue balls plan doesn't sound so great right now.

But she still hasn't come, and that's the point of all this, yeah? Not him getting his rocks off. So he restrains himself, and focuses on her. On the spit-slick stiff peaks of her nipples against his tongue, the deep moan she lets loose as he sucks one in and then draws back slowly until it pops from his lips.

He glances up at her and finds her watching him, her eyes dark and needy (he doesn't imagine his are much better). She whispers, "Come up here," and he obliges, scoots back up into the welcome of her thighs, and feels a particularly manly surge of pride at the way she moans when his cock presses into her again. She keeps her voice soft, like a secret, and tells him, "I want to come against you…"

Robin presses his brow to hers with a groan of, "God, I want that, too, love," and then he steals another kiss and sets to work at making it happen.

He can't stop looking at her, can't stop watching the look of absolute bloody rapture on her face as he grinds himself again and again into her crotch, and it's satisfying as hell.

She's gone from crying on his shoulder to writhing underneath him, blissed out and – he hopes – no longer thinking about anything at all, much less her fucked up family. And she's warm and eager, rocking up into him, her breath washing against his cheek with a vague whiff of spearmint, these not-quite-moans echoing in her throat. They're just thick breaths, just heavy panting, but enough that there's a little hum with each one, her nails scraping along his ribs, her brow pinching and, fuck, if he's not careful, the sight of her combined with the hot friction they're working up will have him coming in his sweats.

He kisses her to keep from watching her, and she moans in earnest now, a low, heady sound, one of her arms sliding up and hooking around his neck as she kisses him back. They're sloppy, she gasps open-mouthed against him on several firm grinds, but her lips are soft and warm and damp and he so loves kissing her. He sucks at her lower lip, catches it in his teeth for a little nip, groans when her hips twist just so and a ripple of sharper pleasure shivers through him.

And then they're brow to brow, hot breath mingling as he adjusts himself slightly, plants his elbows in her pillow as she wriggles a little, widens her thighs even more so he can dig down even deeper on each grind, and her neck arches back at the new friction and simply begs to be kissed. So he does, oh how he does, sucks along her pulse and feels it racing under his tongue, kisses up to the soft spot behind her ear, bites teasingly at the lobe.

Those low, humming breaths have gone higher now, little mewling _Unh!_ s next to his ear, and then she gasps, "Want you inside me," and he could just about die.

He grinds out a moan and sucks another kiss into her skin, breathes a hot, "Me too, babe, God, me too, so much."

He's in the midst of a split-second imagining of all the things he'd give up to be balls deep inside her right now (namely, all of his earthly possessions), when he feels that hand still on his back skim down and push at the waist of his sweats til he's half bare-assed, and oh fuck, wait—

"Whoa," he halts, lifting his head and looking down at that gorgeous face again, kiss-swollen lips with her tongue clamped between them for a moment. "Wait— What are you—?"

She frowns prettily at that, says, "I thought—" and presses up into him. "I want you."

"Fuck," he breathes, dropping his head to hers and cursing himself for how much he bloody _cares_ for her, because, "You said no sex. Before."

"Changed my mind," she pants, scraping her nails teasingly over the cheek of his arse in a way that makes him suck in a breath and pray for strength, goosebumps blooming all up his back.

"Not yet," he tells her, and he cannot believe the words are coming out of his mouth when he is this hard and she is this warm against him, God, he can only _imagine_ how good her cunt must feel right now if the layers between them are as humid and heated as they are. "You're too close, you're not thinking, I don't want you to regret—" Her whine cuts him off, and he pecks a kiss on her lips and promises, "After you come. If you still want to after you come, I will fuck you silly, I promise."

Regina huffs out a little breath, rolls her eyes and tells him, "I'm turned on, not incapacitated," then tips her lips up to steal another kiss from him and murmur, "Fuck me silly now."

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He should say no. Should. Right? He should? She's squirming beneath him, stealing friction where she can, smells like shampoo and sweat and Regina, and he wants her so badly he can taste it.

But, "You'll blame—"

"I won't," she assures him, says it again for good measure, "I won't. Stop being so damn chivalrous."

"You've had a shit week, you—"

"So make it better," she breathes, and then she does this thing, leans up and sucks a kiss at a spot just above his shoulder that makes him shiver and grinds up against his cock at the same time, and he breaks.

He gulps and nods, murmurs, "If you're sure."

She breathes, "I am," and then they're kissing again, hotter now, wetter, deeper, more tongue, an undercurrent of anxious tension between them as she shoves at his pants again and he twists a little to assist, then pushes uselessly at her shorts, rucking them down a little toward her crotch, but they're not coming off until he gives her enough space to close her legs.

He knows she's turned on, they both are, ridiculously so, but he still slips a hand between them to make sure she's wet enough, that she doesn't need more foreplay.

She's more than ready.

His fingers slip through the slick heat of her, and he groans, his cock pulses. "Fuck, you're soaked," he mutters against her lips, and she nods and _Uh huh_ s.

And then she's pushing at his shoulder a little, turning beneath him and he shifts away, watches her reach into the drawer of her nightstand, and grope around for something in its depths. Robin takes advantage of the moment and tugs her shorts down and off, stripping her bottom half bare and groaning at the curve of her ass.

He tells her, "Christ, you're hot," as one hand molds itself to her, gropes and squeezes.

She's chuckling as she turns back to him, little blue square in hand.

Right. Condoms.

He hasn't used one in years, and has to take a half second to mourn the idea of fully feeling the wet clutch of her around his cock, but he grabs it from her anyway and shifts back to his knees.

It's your standard Trojan, the kind you'd buy in a three-pack at the drugstore in some kind of must-fuck-now emergency; they're not his favorite, but, well, this probably qualifies as just such an emergency, doesn't it? It's a bit snug around the stone hard length of him as he rolls it on, a little tight in the tip, and he sends up a prayer that it doesn't break – it wouldn't be the first time he's busted a poorly fit condom.

And then he looks up to find she's tugged her top off in the time it took him to glove up, and she's there before him in all her naked glory. Finally. Legs parted to welcome him back, leaving her on full display for him. For a second Robin just stares dumbly at her, rakes his gaze from her tits down her toned belly, to the flushed wetness between her thighs. She's gorgeous, so bloody gorgeous.

It would take an act of God to keep him from fucking her now.

**.::.**

Her heart is pounding, pounding, nerves and excitement pulsing under her skin, and there is a reason, a hundred reasons probably or maybe just one very good one, that they shouldn't be doing this, but she's so horny she doesn't care. He'd been on top of her, rubbing against her, so hard and so close, and all she'd been able to think about was how good it was going to feel to come, and how much better it would feel to come with him _inside_ her. How much she _wanted_ that.

So she'll deal with all those reasons later, but right now, she's taking what she wants.

He's looking at her in a way that makes her cheeks flush even more – "gobsmacked" she thinks might be the word. He murmurs, "You are so gorgeous; I want to pinch myself but I'm afraid I'll wake up," and she laughs a little at him, shakes her head.

And then she tells him, "You're not so bad yourself, you know," and takes a moment to look at him, too, the definition of his torso, those little lines of muscle that swoop down from his hips, the ones she wants to run her tongue down right now as they lead straight to his cock. Which is very hard, and very ready for her, and what are they _waiting_ for?

She reaches for him as he begins to run a hand from her knee up her thigh, and his voice is thick and sexy when he says, "I'm gonna go down on you first."

But as good as it sounds – and it does sound good – it's not what she wants right now. He's already too far away from her, the comforting cocoon of his body, his faded cologne and the faint smell of hops, and his voice and his _presence_. They're too far away, and she wants him close tonight, desperately wants him close, wants him _with_ her, doesn't want him halfway down her body, leaving her all alone up here by herself.

So she shakes her head, and tugs at his arm, says, "No, stay. Stay with me; I want you inside me."

He bites his lip and nods, settles down on top of her again (her satisfied sigh is immediate; warm skin, and a hint of pine, hops, sweat, his breath on her neck, yes, much better). She cradles him between her thighs, her pulse knocking impossibly harder as he reaches between them and drags himself through her wetness until he's aimed for home. And then he's sinking into her, a pleasant stretch (he's _thick_ , and it's _good_ ), pausing halfway in to shift, to settle both elbows on either side of her before he presses in the rest of the way.

He moans, a soft sound near her ear, and her breath catches, holds until he's nestled all the way in. Until they're pressed snugly together, and she's drawing her knees up, wrapping her ankles around his waist so he can sink even deeper. One of them lets out a satisfied little whimper at the shift but she honestly can't say who, her mind too full of _Robin Robin Robin Robin_ , the feel of him inside her, finally, all around her, on top of her, too much for her to think straight.

Their mouths meet, the kiss heady and deep, _intimate_ in a way that none of their other kisses have been, and for a minute they hold just like that. Him buried deep, her arms wrapping around his ribs, mouths rending and sewing until they're both breathless. And then he draws back a little, pushes in again, and it's definitely Regina who moans this time.

Their lips part with a wet little smack, and Regina breathes, "More."

And that's it, that's all it takes to have him drawing back further, and pushing in deep again, again, again, a steady pace, nothing leisurely about it, but not rushed either. Just right, and the angle is surprisingly good with her ankles locked behind his hips, has pleasure blooming in waves from each thrust, enough to have her moaning deliriously into the space between them. Robin is letting loose these quiet grunting groans with each thrust, and she loves them, loves the way he gasps, "God," and "Fuck, love," and "Mmm…" as he pushes into her.

And then he shifts just a little, she's not sure what or how, but it knocks him against something inside of her, has her head snapping back on a gasp and her brain short-circuiting.

She vaguely hears his, "There?" and nods, grasps at his shoulders as he plunges in again at just the same depth and angle and something inside her sparks and pops and _oh, oh_ this is good, this is just what she needed.

"Robin — I — Don't stop!" she gasps, and he murmurs that he won't, _won't ever stop_ , that she's gorgeous, feels so good, and _That's it, love_ , and _Are you gonna come?_ She _is_ , was so close before, and it's so good, her hips are tilted just so, and she usually needs something more direct on her clit, but he's rubbing against it on every push into her and this might actually do the trick. So she hisses, "Yesss," and rakes her nails down his back, her jaw dropping, lips forming a silent, "Don't stop, don't stop…"

Robin groans and keeps fucking into her, just right, so good, so good, pushing her up, up, right to the edge, until she's gasping at every thrust, Robin's mouth falling on hers when those gasps turn to moans and little cries. She's so close, so close, every time he hits her clit it sends a jolt through her, a ripple of bliss that ends in a high, desperate moan.

His "God, love, _mm!_ " in her ear is desperate and needy, and she thinks maybe he's close, too, and she's so close, trembling with it, but not _quite_ there, never _quite_ there. She needs more, needs—

"I need—" she gasps and he pauses, asks, _What, babe?_ and kisses her. Regina doesn't answer, just worms a hand between their sweat-slicked bellies, down to the hot, damp place between them and presses her fingertips to her clit.

Robin moans softly, whispers, "Good?" and it is, it really is, so she nods, and he moves again, and _Oh, fuck, that's it…_ He chuckles warmly by her ear, making her shiver, and he's fucking her just a little faster now, her fingers rubbing quick, hard circles, and everything tightens, tightens, goes hot and molten, and she moans another _Don't stop!_ and then she's coming.

It pops inside her like an overworked bottle of champagne, a bang and then a surging fizz, sloshing out and out, into her limbs, up through her belly, down to her toes, and he doesn't stop, isn't stopping, every push of him inside her making it swell again.

There are strong fingers in her hair, he cups her face up into his neck and presses her mouth there. She hears her own moaning cries reverberate against his skin, licks and kisses and scrapes her teeth against him as he starts to fuck her harder, deeper, faster, his hips smacking into her fingers with every thrust. It's too much on her clit, too intense, so she pulls her hand back, clutches at his side and revels in the last few deep, swift thrusts before he groans her name, and stiffens, and spills.

The intensity ebbs away, leaving a sort of trembly, pleasant heaviness in her limbs, and she turns her mouth toward his cheek, drags her lips there until he turns to meet her, gentle and warm and breathless.

**.::.**

That was… Christ, that was everything. Hearing her, watching her, feeling her beneath him. The way she rubbed herself off, and cried out as he pushed her over the edge, all tight around him, her nails biting between his shoulder blades. Kissing her now, all cozy and pliant, a little lazy, a little sloppy, but exactly the way he's wanted to be with her for bloody weeks, months, forever it feels like.

He feels sleepy, and satisfied, hopes to God she feels the same, but the way she was moaning as she finished, he can't imagine she doesn't. He'd had to muffle her against his shoulder, just to be on the safe side (and God, the way she'd bit and sucked at him had been the thing that pushed him over the edge, too-thick, too-tight condom be damned).

Speaking of, he's starting to go soft in her now, and that condom needs to go, so he reluctantly ends their lazy kisses, even more reluctantly draws out of her, reaching down to grasp the condom as he does to keep it from leaking. He slips it off, and climbs out of bed with a grunt, balls it up in a tissue and drops it into her trash.

When he turns back to her, his heart sinks into his gut.

She's watching him, teeth dug into her lower lip, and she looks anxious.

"Fuck," he sighs, because, "You regret it."

Her brow pinches, and she swallows, shakes her head as he joins her on the bed and pulls her in close. She snuggles in against him, weaves their legs together, and that's a good sign, at least, but he still feels like shit.

"I wouldn't say regret, it's just…" She grimaces a little, and says, "There were reasons we weren't going to do this. Reasons it wasn't _smart_ to do this, but… I got all riled up, and I wanted you so much, and…"

Robin rolls onto his back with a groaning, "Fuck," and mutters, "I knew it. I should've stopped, should've waited til after you—"

"No," she insists, reaching for him, turning his jaw toward her until he can see her face again. "This isn't your fault. I asked, I practically begged you. This is on me. I'm just… It doesn't… change anything. We still can't be…together, and…"

Oh. Is that all?

He hadn't imagined it _would_ change anything. A good seeing-to does fuck all about her mother, or what he did, or whatever her reasons are for this not going any further. He wasn't under any illusions that the magic power of his cock inside her would make all that go away. Not that he'd been particularly thinking about it in the moment, but still.

Robin rolls back onto his side again, pulling her close and tracing his fingers through the hair at her temple as he says, "Babe, I didn't have sex with you because I thought it would change all that."

"Why did you?"

"Because I wanted to," he tells her, fingers skimming back, working their way into the humid spot just above her nape and scratching gently at her scalp. "Because I thought you wanted to, too."

"I did, but… Doesn't this just make everything more complicated?"

"Only if you want it to," he assures, " And I told you – I don't mind complicated."

"Well, _I do_ ," she insists, and fuck, no, fuck, she's tearing up. God, he's an arse, a complete and utter gobshite. "It feels like everything in my life is complicated right now. I know _you_ don't mind not knowing what this is, or means, or where it's going, but every time we do this, I feel like—like I've made—like I'm—"

"Okay, stop," he tells her gently. He's going to fix this. He'll fix it. Because she doesn't need any more bloody stress in her life, and he hates always being the bloody cause of it. So he's just not going to do it anymore. "Why don't we make a deal? You and me."

Regina frowns, and asks, "What kind of deal?"

"You've got a lot going on right now. A lot of stress, yeah?" Her only answer is a scoff and a lift of her brows. It goes without saying, no doubt. "I don't want to add to that stress. You've got a lot on your plate, so let's just take 'us' off of it for a while, okay?"

Her brow knits together, her eyes going a bit fearful and guarded before she asks him, "What does that mean?" and he realizes a minute too late just how shitty it could have sounded.

So he clarifies, tells her, "It means that every time we do this, you feel bad about it, because it's not… smart, or right, or what all. And I hate making you feel bad when I'm just trying to make you feel better. So let's stop that part – the feeling bad. Let's just let this be what it is, for… a month." A month sounds good, right? Reasonable? "It'll give you some time to sort out the rest of your life, deal with your mum, deal with… everything. Hopefully by then it'll have all settled down, but in the meantime, this can be whatever you need it to be, day by day. And that can change as often as you want, to whatever you want, and there will be no hard feelings. But no more guessing games, and for the next month no more 'this is how it'll be from now on, forever.' Tell me what you need from me to cause you the least stress that day, and I'll be it. You want me to be your friend, I will be. You want me to leave you alone, I will. You want to blow off some stress with a few orgasms, or just feel close, I will gladly come right over. And if on Monday you want to be friends, and on Tuesday you want space for the rest of the week, and on Wednesday you decide that, actually, you'd like me to come over and spend some quality time together without our clothes on, that's fine. You're in control; you decide."

It's a good plan, a solid idea, something he hopes will manage some of her bloody stress for a little while, help her feel a bit more in control of her life.

But she's clearly not buying it.

Regina shakes her head, and says, "That's selfish. I can't do that; it's selfish."

"It's not – but even if it was, for the next month, I don't want to hear about selfish."

Regina scoffs, telling him, "I can't just… turn off my feelings, Robin. And I can't pretend not to know that I'm being selfish. How is it not unfair to jerk you around for a month?"

"Because I'm asking you to," he tells her. "I am giving you permission to not have the answers right now, to just… let it be for a while. And then in a month – on October 1st, I'll take you to dinner, and then we'll go back to my place, and we'll sit down, and we'll work it all out. Figure out what we want, what's smart, what's right for us. After you've had some time for everything to settle down a bit. In the meantime… this makes you feel better before it makes you feel like shit; I know it does. Let yourself feel better when you need to for a while, and let me help."

She chews her lip and watches him for a minute, clearly torn, and then she asks with a bit of challenge in her voice, "What if I want you to leave me alone for the whole month?"

He'd die.

"I'll live," he tells her with a little smile. "I'll hate it, but I'll live. However…" Robin lets his hand rub along her bare thigh, the one that is currently draped over his very bare hip, and says pointedly, "Given our recent history, I have a feeling that won't be the case."

Her lips curve a little, her tone a bit more down than he'd like it to be when she admits, "No, probably not. It still feels…" She sighs, and tells him, "I don't want to hurt you. I know how much you care about me, how much you want me, and—"

"It's not just me," he tells her, because there's no way this is at all one-sided.

"No, it's not," she agrees. "We both have… feelings. There are a lot of feelings here to get hurt. And if I get all the say, you get all the hurt. What if there's a day that I want space, and you want… this?" —she gestures down between them— "You're not going to feel rejected?"

"No."

The look she gives him screams _bullshit_. "Really?"

"Really," he insists, leaning in to press a soft kiss to her brow. "Because right now, what I want more than anything is for you to have whatever you need to find some peace of mind. It kills me to see you upset all the time, and it guts me when it's my doing. I don't want this to hurt you anymore, so let's decide not to let it."

"But—" She scowls, stares hard somewhere around his chin and says, "You said I'm always moving the goalposts on you. Isn't this just moving the goalposts again, and again, and again?"

Robin slides his hand to cup her jaw and lifts it until he can see her face. "Love, as long as you tell me where they are, I'm fine. I can handle a month of following your lead; it's the not knowing that drives me mad. Just be honest with me about what you need, and give yourself a little break from having to figure it all out right now."

Her gaze shifts away from him again, goes a bit distant as she mulls it all over. But her jaw stays put, so he lets his thumb caress gently across her cheek, leans in to press another kiss to her brow.

Finally, she lets out a little sigh, and says, "One month?"

"One month," he confirms, drawing her gaze back to his. "You run the show until the end of September – and if one day before that you think you've got it all figured out, if you want to talk sooner, you just… let me know. But don't rush it, alright? Take the time you need for _you_ ; I'll keep until October."

She's still not entirely sold, he can see it in her eyes, in the pout of her lips, but she asks, "Can I think on it?" and he hopes that's a good sign.

"Of course you can, love," Robin assures, and then he's cuddling her close to him again, rubbing his hand down her back, and up. "But not tonight. It's late, some git kept you up talking all night, and then fucking, and then… this. Put it out of your mind til morning, alright?"

Regina's shoulders shake in a soft, derisive, "Hm," and then she says, "When have you ever known me to do that?"

"I could get you off again," he offers cheekily. "That usually quiets your mind for a minute or two."

She snorts and shoves him into his back – but she follows, curling against his side, one of her legs slipping between his as she pillows her head against his shoulder and rubs her hand over his bare chest. And _that_ , he thinks, is definitely a good sign.

"I can't believe we actually had sex," she murmurs, and he's grateful to hear a bit of smile in her voice.

"We did," he sighs happily. "And it was very good sex. I know we've gotten a bit… distracted… from the pleasant haze of afterglow, but I'd like you to take a moment and think back," he teases, and she giggles softly, "to how absolutely brilliant that sex was."

"God, it really was." She stretches against him, her legs pressing and sliding along his. "I'm still a little tingly. And… a little guilty."

"Not allowed," he reminds, and she chuckles once and points out that she hasn't agreed to that yet. "Didn't you say your therapist told you there's nothing wrong with getting your jollies as long as we're on the same page?"

"He did, but doesn't this… change the page?"

She shifts, pushes herself up onto her elbow so she can see him properly, her head resting against her hand.

Robin rubs his thumb along the bit of her back he can reach and asks, "Did it change it the last time? This week – or before, when I fingered you at my place?"

She pouts prettily (she does everything prettily; God, she's so ridiculously pretty), and says, "That wasn't _sex_. Sex is more intimate than mutual handjobs."

"And handjobs are more intimate than kissing or grinding on my couch. We've done all those things and been fine." She's chewing her lip again, so Robin lets out a breath, draws her in for a soft peck and then murmurs against her mouth, "If you don't want anything to change, then nothing changes."

She pulls back and narrows her eyes a little, skeptical as she says, "Nothing changes? Really?"

"Well, I'll be picturing you naked with a bit more accuracy, and there's a few more painfully sexy images for me to jerk off to now, but…" he teases, and she snorts and smacks at his shoulder.

"I'm being serious," she tells him.

"So am I," he chuckles, and then he tells her, "Whatever you decide, I promise you – nothing's going to change, and we'll be alright. I like you. I like talking to you, and I like spending time with you, and I like kissing you, and really, _really_ liked having sex with you." She smiles a little at that, and Robin smiles back at her. "But if I never do the last two again, it doesn't change how much I like the first two. I don't want you to regret this, and I don't want you to think it changes how I see you, or what I want from you, because it doesn't."

Those dark, expressive eyes of hers narrow themselves skeptically before she says to him, "Please don't lie to me right now just because you want me to agree to your proposal."

"I'm not," he tells her earnestly, earning another doubtful raise of her brows.

"You're telling me that now that we've done it once, you're not going to want to have sex with me again?"

Robin grins, shakes his head at her, and says, "Regina, I wanted to have sex with you before. I've wanted to have sex with you for months. Where we go from here doesn't change how much I want you, but I'll accept whatever you choose. Ball's in your court."

"Truly?" she questions, and Robin nods.

"Truly."

**.::.**

It sounds too good to be true.

Too good to be true, and too selfish to be right, and too… complicated for her brain to handle at this level of exhaustion.

And it really is hitting her now, the lack of sleep, and the high emotions, and the endorphins from the sex.

She's _tired_.

"I'll let you know," she tells him, adding, "Soon," because she doesn't want to draw this out. She's so tired of this whole drawn out mess. But that doesn't mean she should just pretend it isn't there for a month – and what happens when that month is over? What then?

It's not like her mother will magically not be a vindictive psychopath – although it's entirely possible she'll have gotten up the courage to cut her off for good.

Hey, that would solve quite a few of her problems, now, wouldn't it?

It's a shame she doesn't have the courage to do it…

"Stop thinking so loud," he murmurs to her, and she blinks, and frowns at him.

She says, "Sorry," and he gives her a sympathetic little smile, his hand rubbing against her back.

"I don't think I did a very good job of shutting your brain off."

"No, you did," she sighs. "I just turned it back on."

Robin draws her in for a little smooch, and then he's urging, "Come on, babe. Let's get you back in your pajamas and all tucked in, and then get you some sleep."

Regina sits, twisting so she can look at the clock, and her heart sinks. Half past three.

"Yes, I have a solid two and a half hours to look forward to," she mutters, finding her camisole within arms' reach and tugging it over her head.

"We got a bit distracted," Robin admits as he tugs on his sweats; Regina smirks ruefully and tries to find her shorts. "You want me to stay the rest of the night?"

Robin finds her shorts first, wherever he must have tossed them when he stripped them off of her, and she takes them with a sigh and tells him, "No, I don't want you here in the morning. The last thing I need is to have to explain all this to Henry."

"He'd never let it go," Robin agrees, fully dressed now and leaning in to press a lingering kiss to her lips. She indulges in the soft, sweet presses, drinks in the warmth of his palm against her neck and then he's sighing and pressing his forehead to hers, and she realizes suddenly that he's readying himself to go.

That's not at all what she wants.

And because tonight is a night of asking for what she wants (even when she really, really shouldn't), she pulls back until she can meet his gaze and asks, "Stay until I fall asleep?"

The smile he gives her is relieved, and warm, and he leans in for yet another kiss before insisting she crawl in under her covers and he stay on top of them, "So I won't wake you when I go."

It's not exactly what she wants, but he's not wrong, so she slips beneath duvet and sheet, and lets him settle for the blanket that was supposed to keep them from doing exactly what they did. She's not usually a cuddly sleeper – she usually likes her space. Lots of space.

But tonight, she wriggles back against him as best she can with the layers in between, and falls asleep to the comforting weight of his arm around her belly, and the soft tickle of his breath in her hair.


	40. Chapter 40

Robin wakes with a grunt, a dull pain blooming in his ribs.

He's not sure how long he's been asleep but it was not nearly long enough; his eyes are still glued shut, sandpapery and aching, and his whole body is sleep-drunk and heavy. He's warm, and there's an orange glow of sunlight against his eyelids that he hopes doesn't bloody keep him awake, because he is absolutely going back to sleep as soon as humanly possible.

As soon as he stops thinking and lets himself sink back under.

Why is he even awake to start with?

Then he hears the viciously hissed, "Wake _up!_ ", accompanied by another sharp jab to his ribs, and remembers: he's at Regina's.

Last night comes rushing back to him, her tears and her kisses and her… God, her everything else. Her all wrapped around him, the bliss of finally fucking her. Curling up with her, feeling her breathing even out and slow as she finally, finally slipped into sleep against him and – oh.

Fuck.

Robin peels his eyes open to find Regina glaring fretfully at him, her sleep-mussed hair haloed by the sunlight streaming in through sheer curtains (why she doesn't close the drapes and shut out all that terrible morning sun, he can't imagine).

"You were supposed to leave after I fell asleep," she whispers heatedly, her frown so pretty he feels an intense need to kiss it.

"I must've dozed off," he rasps, voice rough and scratchy with sleep. "What time's'it?"

"Six," she tells him. Robin's arm is still heavy around her middle, sliding as she sits up and takes all that cozy warmth with her, her blankets puddling at her waist. His hand ends up resting on the softness of her belly, his thumb stroking there as she says, "I have to get ready for work."

She runs a hand through her hair, then looks back at him. The morning sun lets him see her in a way last night's dim bedside lamp hadn't, and he realizes she looks wrecked – her skin pale, dark circles beneath her eyes. They're a little bloodshot, and incredibly weary, and his heart aches for her.

He probably should have just let her sleep last night. Christ knows she needs it.

His hand rubs gently across her belly, and he urges, "Come back down here for a minute, and then I'll go."

She sighs, but sinks back to the pillows and lets him draw her in close again to steal a quick peck from pouting lips.

"You need to leave before Henry wakes up," she tells him; he just shifts the hand that now rests at the base of her spine, slipping his thumb up beneath the cotton of her top and stroking it over the water-soft skin he finds there.

"Does he really get up at six?" he asks her. "Because I had high hopes that Roland would grow out of that phase."

Her lips curve a little, finally, and she admits, "Not usually, no. He's usually still out when I leave, but I don't want to risk it. He'd be so excited to know you stayed the night, and… I just… I can't have him in the middle of this right now."

Robin nods and clears some of the sleep from his throat, giving her a little squeeze and saying, "I'll tiptoe on out, I just want to look at you for a second."

Her smile curves a little wider, her eyes softening before they inevitably go guarded again. "I'm still… thinking over your offer, okay?"

Robin frowns at that.

"If you've been up fretting about it instead of sleeping, I will absolutely hate myself," he tells her, but thankfully she shakes her head, her hand rubbing gently at his bicep.

"No, I just woke up," Regina assures him. "I only meant… I still want some time to think about it," she clarifies. "It still feels… selfish."

He draws a breath to remind her she doesn't get to use that word, but she heads him off, reminding him again, "I haven't said yes; you don't get to scold yet."

Robin smirks, and nods, says, "Think on it, then. Take all the time you need." He extricates his hand from under her shirt and runs it up her spine, up into her hair, tipping her head down and pressing his lips gently to her brow. "But please try to get some sleep tonight. You still look absolutely knackered."

"I am," she half-groans, making his heart pump a little harder as she leans into his lips, lets him trace a line of kisses at her hairline as she tells him, "I have a prescription sleep aid to pick up today, and I'm going to take it tonight and crash. My body is… throbbing?"

Robin hmmphs a little laugh and murmurs, "And not in a good way, I'm assuming."

He knows that kind of tired – where you can feel your blood in your veins, can feel the aching pulse of muscles that haven't had a chance to repair and refresh and renew. It's misery.

"Definitely not," she agrees, a smile in her voice. He almost misses her whispered, "That was last night…"

Almost, but not quite; he grins, then chuckles naughtily and pulls back to find her smirking bashfully.

"I hope you don't have any regrets about it this morning," he murmurs warmly, one hand lifting to trail lightly along her hairline, back behind her ear. "It was what it was, and we'll decide where to go from here. But whatever we decide, I don't want you to feel bad that it happened. I certainly don't."

"I don't feel bad," she attempts to reassure him, but the hesitation is still evident in her eyes, in the way her hand hitches as it rubs over his arm. "Just… confused. I know what feels good, I just don't know what feels… smart."

"Go with what feels good," he murmurs, leaning in to press his lips gently to hers, stealing one simmering kiss, and then another. "For now, just… go with your gut."

"Maybe," she concedes, and then she's the one pressing their lips together softly – a good sign, that. Robin tightens his arm against her, lets his tongue slip out to brush against the seam of her lips. They open to him, her tongue swiping lazily against his – but only briefly, and then she has him groaning disappointment as she draws back, their brows pressing for a moment as she licks her own lips gently and then tells him, "You should go. I'm not running on a streak of good luck this week; if I indulge much longer, Henry's going to have a full bladder the same time you go to sneak out the bedroom door."

Robin chuckles lightly and nods, presses his lips to the tip of her nose, her forehead, his fingers giving one last scratch at the base of her skull before he forces himself to roll onto his back and throw off the blanket that he'd slept under.

He glances at her, drinks in the sight of their morning-after one last time – her mussed hair, and sleepy eyes, and rumpled pajamas.

And then he agrees, "We mustn't press our luck, I suppose," and screws up enough courage to leave her bed.

**.::.**

Dr. Archie Hopper's practice opens at approximately ten AM on weekdays, and Regina is ringing his office at 10:02.

She taps a pen absently against the surface of her desk as the line rings once, twice, and then Belle's ever-pleasant voice picks up with her usual, "Dr. Hopper's office; this is Belle, how can I help you this morning?"

"Belle, it's Regina Mills," she greets, and then she gets right to the point: "I need to see Dr. Hopper today."

"Today?" she asks, confused. "Weren't you just—"

"Yes, I was," Regina cuts her off tartly, because how _dare_ that little bitch judge her. She works in a _therapist's_ office; Regina is certainly not the first person who's had a fucking crisis. "And I need to see him again today."

"He's booked full for the day," she tells Regina reluctantly, and Regina grits her teeth as the backs of her eyeballs prickle with heat, and oh no, no, she will not be crying on the phone with her therapist's receptionist. There's nothing really to cry over anyway; she's just overtired, and over-emotional.

So she takes a deep breath, and asks with a (thankfully) steady voice, "Can I speak with him, please?"

Belle hesitates for a moment before she says, "Let me see if he's free," and the line clicks over to some truly terrible soft jazz as she's put on hold.

Regina taps that pen some more—an anxious staccato now—as she waits. It's less than a minute before she's freed from the dulcet tones of Kenny G, and instead hears Dr. Hopper's concerned, "Regina, is everything alright?"

"No, everything is _not_ alright," she hisses. "I took your advice from last night, and now everything is a mess, and I need to talk to you. Today."

She's not sure why she thought talking directly to him would yield her better results – maybe he'd hear the pitiful undercurrent of desperation in her voice and find it in his heart to pull a magical free hour from somewhere.

Whatever she'd expected, her hopes are dashed with a sympathetic, "I'm sorry, Regina, but I don't have any open appointments today."

Her eyes burn again, so she shuts them. She can just… lock the frustration inside until her tear ducts stop betraying her.

She hears a shuffle over the line, and then Archie is telling her, "I can fit you in on Saturday morning, if you'd like – or we can talk now for" —there's a pause and then he says— "twenty minutes, if that would help."

"No, I—" She takes a breath in, lets it whoosh out, and tells him, "I need you to make time for me. It's an emergency."

"Are you in crisis?" he asks, his concern rising.

She's not, not by the standard definition. This isn't really an _emergency,_ it's just… she needs to talk to him. Now. Today. She needs to figure this out today before she goes absolutely bonkers.

So she sidesteps his question, says instead, "I need to talk to you. I need to talk to someone," and sends up a silent prayer that she'd had the good sense to shut her office door before making this call, because she sounds like a pathetic idiot.

She hears the thought, and her glance flicks to the rubber band around her wrist, her heart knocking hard as she reaches to snap it. The little pop of pain makes her wince, but she thinks of Robin, of _No thunder, nobody will know_ …, and feels the tiniest bit better.

Meanwhile, Dr. Hopper is asking her, "Are you planning to hurt yourself, or someone else?"

Regina scowls. She's aching, right in her middle, and at the base of her skull. Frustration, exhaustion, longing, confusion. But that's not what he's talking about.

"I— No, but—"

"Okay," Dr. Hopper cuts her off gently, and damnit, she's not going to win this. "If you are not in immediate danger of harming yourself or others, then I'm going to have to ask you to wait. I'll call you if I have a cancellation, or if I can move something around for you tomorrow. But until then, I need you to be patient."

"Patience is not one of my strong suits," she tells him, disappointment honing the edge of her voice.

"I know that," he says, and she can almost hear him smiling, that bastard. "And I can hear that you're frustrated, and I'm sorry about that. But right now, my hands are tied."

"Alright," she sighs, resigned to her fate of feeling _like this_ for another whole day. Two days. God, who can she knock off or trip or otherwise inconvenience to get an opening _tomorrow?_ But he'd said he'd see if he could move something around for her, right? And who wants to go to therapy on a _Friday,_ when they could be out drinking, or at the movies, or…

"Did you get some rest last night?" Dr. Hopper asks her, and Regina feels herself flush, up the back of her neck, over her chest.

How on earth was she supposed to get any sleep, when she was emotionally compromised and invited _Robin_ over for some physical comfort? Some "mutual de-stressing," God, how did she not know the second she picked up the phone that they would end up exactly the way they did? How did _Dr. Hopper_ not know?

She feels irritation at the good doctor tick up her spine, but bites her tongue and manages to answer with a civil, "Barely."

"I called in your prescription; it should be ready at the pharmacy," he reassures, and then he's encouraging, "A good night's sleep can make a world of difference in the way we view things, Regina. Why don't you pick up your prescription and try to get some proper rest tonight? Have someone watch Henry if you need to, just try to get some sleep; it might make things seem less overwhelming."

"Sleep isn't going to undo my bad decisions," she tells him, studiously ignoring the suggestion that "someone" watch her son – and then reminding herself that she has a babysitter, and other neighbors, and "someone" doesn't have to mean Robin. That he probably just meant… someone.

"Maybe not," Dr. Hopper agrees, "but we can talk about that on Saturday. I'm going to send you back to Belle to make an appointment, and if anything opens up in the meantime, I'll be sure to call you."

"Is that a promise?"

She manages to not sound weak, to not sound pleading. To sound strong, and assertive, and… it's a ridiculous thing to ask, to have him _promise_ he will call her. He'll call her; she's asked for the time, he won't not give it to her if he has it. Asking for a promise is childish.

Still, it settles her just a little to hear him say, "It is. I promise you, Regina."

She lets out a breath and nods, and then he's urging, "Take a few minutes to breathe, and focus, and get through the rest of your day. We'll talk as soon as I'm able."

She tells him, "Alright," and, "Thank you," and then she hangs up, no less anxious than she'd been before she made the call.

She needs to get up, to stretch her legs, walk off some of this nervous energy, so she heads for the break room and a cup of coffee she absolutely does not need.

When she walks in, it's to the sight of Mal in one of her nearly-backless dresses, the dragon climbing her back rippling as she slams the freezer door shut and lets out a little growl.

Regina stops dead for a second, an all-too-caught feeling lancing through her that she only recovers from as Mal begins to turn, letting out a ripely frustrated, "That thieving little bitch," as she tosses the box of fish sticks onto the table.

"Who?" Regina asks, trying to sound nonchalant, or at least interested, and not at all like she had a part in the aforementioned theft.

She makes her way to the coffee pot as Mal mutters, "Kathryn. She's been raiding my hoard."

Regina forces a little chuckle as she reaches for the pot, and asks, "Your hoard of fish sticks?"

"No," Mal replies, sinking into a chair at the table as Regina fills her mug. There's a bit of mischief underneath her disgruntled tone as she admits, "Cookies. She's been stealing cookies from me for months, and thinking I didn't notice. But how she thought I wouldn't notice _six…_ "

Regina scoffs softly – and genuinely. They'd only pilfered four yesterday; Kathryn must have come back for seconds.

"That's bold of her," Regina agrees, taking her coffee to the table and settling down next to Mal. She'll have to lie through her teeth a little longer, but it's a good distraction from the way she's just made an idiot of herself on the phone.

"Yes, well," Mal mutters, then she gives Regina a once-over and says, "I'm assuming you know?"

There's only one thing Regina can imagine _that_ statement is about, so she nods, and sips her coffee. It's Sidney's – strong and bitter and heavily caffeinated. She probably should have added a splash of cream; she hasn't had much in the way of food today.

But then Mal is thumbing off a cookie for her, and Regina reaches for it automatically. A cookie is a horrible excuse for a snack, too much sugar, chocolate, fat, she doesn't _deserve_ —

She stops herself mid-thought, the thin rubber band feeling heavy around her wrist as she sets the cookie down next to her mug. She twists the rubber around her finger, but her heart is suddenly pounding, sweat suddenly itching under her arms. She can't do this in front of Mal, it's mortifying, so she untwists the band and retwists it again, hopes it looks like she's fidgeting absently as Mal bitches about how Kathryn's impending departure has made her bold as fucking brass.

Fidgeting is a bad habit, too, but it's better than the truth. Anxiety claws and crawls, and she _needs_ Dr. Hopper to make room for her tonight, now, she needs—she's pathetic, she needs—

She jumps slightly when Mal's hand settles around her wrist, giving it a quick squeeze to draw her attention before pulling it away. Regina looks up to find Mal's head tilted slightly, her eyes narrowed to hide her concern, as she bluntly appraises, "You look like shit. Are you okay?"

Regina nods, tells her, "I'm fine," but it's frayed a little around the edges, and the prickling heat is back, and her chest is tight, and oh God, oh no, not here, not now, not—

"You're usually a better liar than that," Mal tells her plainly, and then she urges with a point of her black-lacquered finger, "Eat your cookie; it'll help."

But it won't, God, she has no idea how much it _won't_ right now, and the little laugh Regina lets out in response has an embarrassing edge of hysteria to it. Mal notices, of course she does, her eyes narrowing even further.

Regina drops her head into her hands so she doesn't have to meet Mal's gaze, and admits an utterly mortifying, "Every once in awhile, I struggle with… anxiety." God, she hates admitting it, _hates it_ , but she does it anyway. "My weekend was less than ideal, and I've been riding the edge of an attack for days. And I haven't been sleeping well, so that's not helping. It'll pass, just… forget about it. Let's talk about work. Kathryn. Something."

Anything, God, _anything_ other than her anxiety itself.

Her chest is winding tighter and tighter, and she thinks of Dr. Hopper's promise of anti-anxiety meds if she can't get this under control by herself, and it just makes this all worse, makes her feel worse, her fingers creeping up into her hair and tangling there as she mutters, "I'm sorry, shit, I'm sorry—I'm fine—please go away—"

She reminds herself to breathe, to inhale to the count of four...

Mal makes this little sound, a low hum, and then declares, "Nonsense. Come with me."

Regina starts to protest, but is shut down with a firm, "Don't fuss. Come on. I know what you need." A quick squeeze lands on her shoulder, and Regina looks up to the sight of Mal's back as she retreats.

Regina follows, forcing herself to take slow breaths, and grabbing the cookie as she does, because, well, she'll feel better in a minute, once this passes, and they're good cookies. And she didn't even have to steal this one.

They end up in Mal's office, the door shut as Mal roots around in one of her desk drawers for a minute, then sets two shot glasses on the edge of her desk and pulls her keyboard tray out until she can reach to the back of it in search of something to fill them with, no doubt.

"Mallory, it's noon," Regina points out, one brow rising north in judgement.

"It's happy hour in Stockholm," Mal shrugs, pouring a measure of whiskey for each of them from the flask she's brandishing. "And you need something to settle those nerves." She glances pointedly to Regina's mug, telling her needlessly, "Coffee won't help."

She's not wrong, so Regina takes another breath and reaches for the shot nearest her, sneaking a glance through the glass door into the office beyond to make sure that none of their coworkers can see this bit of daytime debauchery before she knocks it back. The whiskey burns its way down her throat and settles warm in her belly; Regina shuts her eyes and focuses on the sensation before opening them again to set the shot glass back on the desk next to where Mal is settling her own now-empty one.

Mal immediately refills them, urging, "One more ought to do it," when Regina gives her that same doubtful look.

Regina fights the urge to bite her lip, to _show_ how unsteady, how off-kilter, she feels. And because she doesn't want to admit her weakness, she reaches for the second shot and knocks that one back, too.

Another burn, another bloom of heat to add warmth to the first, and then she's sinking into the chair opposite Mal's desk and shutting her eyes for a second to take another deep breath.

Two shots of whiskey on a nearly empty stomach, it turns out, _does_ do wonders for the nerves. She focuses on the feeling of the whiskey hitting her veins, imagines the warmth spreading into her muscles, loosening her lungs, slowing her heart back to normal.

It's odd how easy it is to slip back into her therapy toolbox after only, well, four sessions in two weeks…

But the visualization works, the whiskey helps, she feels everything starting to loosen up again, keeping her eyes shut even when Mal asks with a suitable amount of disdain, "Is it Sidney? His sudden bad attitude has been pretty hard to ignore."

Regina winces, and admits, "That's on me. I finally let him have it for not listening the first fifty times I tried to let him down gently."

"Let me guess, he didn't take it well," Mal drawls.

Regina hums an affirmative and nods, telling her, "To say the least. He's been cold-shouldering me since I snapped at him on Monday." Her brows lift and fall as she adds, "But on the upside, he's stopped showering me with gifts."

"Silver lining," Mal smirks.

"I suppose so," Regina concedes, blinking her eyes open. "Anyway, he's not helping, but no. It's not work-related, it's personal."

The whiskey warms her joints, and goes to her head a little bit, just enough for her to blurt, "I'm sorry, I'm being… This isn't your problem to deal with…"

"Maybe not, but I like you, and you haven't been stealing from me." Oh, if she only knew. "So here's some advice: Let it go – for now. If it's personal, put it aside for the day, dive in here, and let the work pull your focus from everything else. It usually works for me."

The anxiety makes her testy, feisty, her tone more bitter than she'd intended when she bites, "You have a lot of anxiety attacks in the middle of your workday?"

Mal just arches one brow slowly, taking the attitude in stride and drawling, "Not in a while, thankfully. But my life hasn't always been puppies and rainbows."

Right. Well.

Regina feels like a bit of a bitch – and a bit unreasonable – after her needless little dig.

Thankfully, Mal doesn't give her time to have to eat her words. She just continues with, "I don't know what's bothering you right now, and I don't need to. That's your business. But if you need a distraction from it for a minute… I always have cookies and liquor, and I won't judge if you need to breathe into a paper bag for a little while."

This time, Regina forces herself to push through the lingering anxiety, forcing a smile onto her face, and offering a politely dismissive, "It'll be better in a few days. But thank you."

Mal shrugs and caps her flask, tucking it away as she tells her, "My offer stands."

**.::.**

The whiskey makes Regina feel a little rubbery, a little tipsy, her fingers clumsy as they clack against her keyboard. She's… not sober, not entirely, and it's the middle of the workday, and it's mortifying.

Mother would certainly have something to say about it.

So Regina leaves. She takes an hour lunch, and she leaves the office, gets out of that place for a little while and walks in the summer heat to the Magic Bean.

She sucks down half a seltzer with lime to dilute the booze, and doesn't wave off the bread plate as usual. Instead she spreads a thin layer of the Magic Bean's signature sweet potato spread on a slice of nutty seven-grain, and bites into it.

A salad alone won't be enough to soak up the ill-advised (although admittedly helpful as a stopgap) mid-morning booze, but there are grilled fish tacos on the summer menu that she's considered before, but never tried.

Today is the day, she decides, with another bite of bread.

She'll have two slices of bread, and then the tacos, and maybe she'll even stop by Grumpy's for a scone and a cortado a little later in the day.

Another little break, to clear her head, if she needs.

She shouldn't need – who can't make it through their workday without three breaks and a therapy session? Who _is_ she right now? This isn't _her_ , this isn't—

The anxiety spikes up behind her breastbone again, and she reaches for her phone, her thumb hovering over the recent calls, over _Dr. Hopper – office_ , but she freezes.

She can't call him, she doesn't need to call him. He's busy, he has patients, and she doesn't _need_ him, she just needs a distraction.

It's a terrible idea, an awful idea, one she would outright reject if she gave herself time to think about it, but her thumb moves a half centimeter down and presses _Robin Locksley_ instead.

**.::.**

He can't stop thinking about her.

He'd slept a bit, and dreamt of soft kisses, and soft tits, and her all warm and wet around him; he'd woken up hard, wrapped his hand around his cock and jerked off to the memory of her, of them.

And then he'd given up on sleep, and showered, and dressed. Made himself a sandwich, and watched a bit of telly while he fiddled with his guitar.

Every note and syllable that had come to him had been about her. Sappy, lovesick, passionate junk that he'd written down anyway, because it was better than bloody nothing, that's for certain.

He's full to the brim with her right now, and the sight of her name on his caller ID makes him grin.

He swipes his phone into life and greets her with a warm, "Hello, babe," but the voice she answers with slams his smile straight down.

Her "Hi," is quiet and agitated, anxious nearly the way it had been the other night when she'd ended up at his place.

His heart aches for her, and he wishes there was something he could do to end this bloody torment she seems to be drowning in.

"What's wrong, love?" he asks, and there's a swift inhale on the other line, then a slow exhale.

"I shouldn't have called you."

"Bollocks," he dismisses her. "You can always call."

"No, I—" she cuts off, and he can practically see her shaking her head at herself. "Forget it. Let's just pretend I never called."

"Regina, what's wrong?" he asks her gently, undeterred by her evasion (concerned, but undeterred).

"Nothing, I—" Another soft puff of breath and then she whispers, "I just need to get some sleep. This exhaustion is killing me, my anxiety is terrible." Her voice winds tighter with every word, grows damp and teary, and Robin is setting aside his guitar before she even finishes, "I keep trying to push it down, but it keeps coming back, and… I thought getting out of the office for a little while would help, so I'm sitting alone at a restaurant—"

"Where are you?" he interrupts, because he won't have her sitting by herself in the midst of a panic, not when she's only twenty minutes away from him and he's nothing to do for another two hours.

He turns off the TV, and pushes himself off the couch, Tuck casting him an interested glance as he heads out of the living room and toward the stairs.

"The Magic Bean, on Macintosh," she says, but when he tells her he'll come meet her, she protests. "No, Robin. You don't need to—"

"I want to," he insists.

"I can handle this," she counters. "I just need to… breathe, and eat something, and… settle down."

"I haven't had lunch," he lies, strolling into his bedroom and pulling a clean pair from his sock drawer. "Let me join you. You like this place, yeah?"

She's mentioned it before, told him it was a favorite.

"I do, but—"

"So let me come see what all the fuss is about," he grunts, tugging one sock on, and then the other.

"I only have an hour for lunch—"

"I'll be there in ten minutes."

"It takes _at least_ fifteen to get here from home, and park, and—" Regina argues as he trots down the stairs.

"I'll be there in ten," he promises her. A little speeding never hurt anyone, right? "Just sit tight and wait for me, alright?"

He's pocketed keys and wallet and is heading for the back door when she lets out a sigh of resignation, and asks him, "What do you want to eat?"

"What're you having?" he asks with a twist of the knob, and then a shut of the door, a quick turn of keys to lock the place up tight.

She says something about fish tacos, which doesn't sound all that appetizing to him, but he tells her anyway, "Order me the same. And a beer. I'll be right there."

And then he hangs up on her – which is a bit rude, admittedly, but he's not giving her any more chances to argue with him over this. She's sat by herself at a restaurant, fighting an anxiety attack, and he knows she's claiming exhaustion, but he can't help but feel their late night rendezvous might be more to blame than simple lack of sleep.

And he can't have her sitting there, all worked up over him—them—and just sit at home like it isn't happening. Like he doesn't know.

So he'll slip behind the wheel and buckle his belt, and he'll run a stop sign or two, and he'll sit with her and eat some tacos, and pull her out of her head a bit, if he can. At the very least, he'll prove that they can share a meal like nothing has changed, like things can be normal. Maybe that will help settle her nerves about all this?

He makes it to the Magic Bean in ten minutes, exactly – or rather, drives bloody _past_ it ten minutes exactly after pulling out of his drive, and lets out a ripe little curse of frustration. But there's an open parking spot on his side of the street as he turns to loop the block again, so he pulls in there, and feeds a meter, and is walking into the restaurant at exactly thirteen minutes from the time he left.

He finds Regina at a table by the windowed front, a fresh glass of seltzer in front of her, and an amber colored beer in front of the empty chair. She's winding and unwinding a straw wrapper around her index finger, staring hard at the empty wood in front of her, and he can see the deep, steady rise and fall of her shoulders as she breathes.

When he reaches for the chair, she looks up, then glances down at her watch, and back up with an accusatory lift of her brow.

"You didn't kill anyone on the way here, did you?" she taunts, and Robin smirks and settles into his seat, lifts his beer for a quick sip – it's alright, but not great. Or rather, not what he'd have chosen for himself, but then he hadn't been very specific, had he?

"Just a few speed limits," he assures her after he swallows.

"You didn't need to come here," she insists, meeting his gaze, her voice steady, and firm, but he can _feel_ the anxiety radiating off of her, and her eyes start to well as she tells him, "I'm fine."

Sure, she is.

"Talk to me," he urges, letting his fingers reach across the table and weave with hers – pleased when she lets him. "What's got you all bothered?"

"Nothing," she insists again, blinking rapidly and sucking in a breath, her tears drying up as quickly as they formed. "I mean – last night, but… It's not that. I just… It keeps…" Her free hand lifts to her chest and presses there anxiously, and all Robin can see is her frantic insistence that she couldn't breathe on Sunday night. "I had a… disappointment, this morning. But it's not that. It's… I'm tired. I need sleep, and I need to clear my head, and I'm hungry, but I'm not hungry, and I'm anxious, and it's _frustrating_ , because I don't _want_ to keep feeling this way."

He rubs his thumb back and forth along hers as she talks, lets her keep going, lets her vent, because she seems to have hit her stride now, and it doesn't seem like voicing all her frustrations is making things any _worse_ for her. So perhaps purging them all to him will make her feel better.

"And it keeps welling up at the worst times – it's mortifying." Her gaze flicks around the place as if she's suddenly realized other people might be able to hear her. But the three tables nearest them are empty, and she's not speaking loudly at all.

Robin gives her hand a little squeeze of encouragement and her focus slips back to him.

"It started to wind up again when I was talking to Mal, and she" —Regina scoffs a little— "gave me two shots of whiskey to settle my nerves."

"Good woman," Robin comments, reaching for his beer again with his free hand, his other thumb still rubbing steadily against hers.

Regina's smile in return is wry and disapproving. "I haven't eaten much today; it was enough to make me feel… not quite sober. So I came here, to have some food." She draws a breath like she's going to continue speaking, but it catches in her throat, her mouth open, her jaw working, before she seems to give up, and drops her gaze to the table again. She takes a shaky breath, and lets it out on a determined whisper, "I'm recovered, but acute anxiety can trigger poor food choices for me, and I was starting to plan all my food for the rest of the day, and it was all fine – I'm fine—I'm not— it was fine, I just… I got anxious again, and I wanted to call my therapist, but I—"

She freezes again, pauses, and then stumbles ahead with, "I didn't want to call him. Not when I just saw him last night, and you were the other most recent call, so… I called you."

Regina glances up to him again, finally, her gaze wary and shamed, like she's expecting judgment from him, expecting some other shoe to drop. And she's holding herself with so much bloody tension, her fingers fidgeting in his hold, her shoulders rigid, and it breaks him.

But she doesn't need that from him right now, so he makes sure to keep his voice even and steady as he tells her quietly, "Good," and, "I'm glad you did." And then he asks, "Why didn't you want me to come?"

"Because I feel like an idiot," she hisses, her gaze flitting around beyond him. "Like I'm being hysterical over nothing." Robin looks down to the fresh rubber band on her wrist and has half a mind to reach for it, but then she adds, "And I don't know what we are right now."

Sod the rubber band, it can wait.

Robin shrugs a little, and tells her, "That's alright. You'll think on it; we'll figure it out. But I'm here no matter what we are. You can always call me if you need an ear."

Her teeth sink into her bottom lip, worrying it anxiously for a moment before she reaches for the rubber band herself and gives it a sharp snap, her eyes going damp before she blinks the tears away rapidly. It was a hard snap – harder than he'd have done, for sure, but he doesn't think it could have hurt enough to make her cry, and she's taking a deep breath in, pushing it out slowly, so he thinks the tears were anxiety-born. Drawn up by whatever traitorous thought had driven her to snap the band.

It's killing him to see her so fraught, so he says to her, "Tell me five things you can hear."

Those dark eyes flick back to his and hold for a second, and then she licks her lips, and swallows lightly, and starts to make a list. The conversation around them, silverware, someone's too-loud music on the street. The music in the restaurant. A man laughing on the other side of the room.

Robin can't remember what comes next, but he doesn't think it much matters if he gets it right, so he asks for, "Four things you can see."

"You," she starts with, her hand squeezing against his.

Robin squeezes back and gives her a smile, watching as she shifts her attention to the street and says, "The parking meter…"

And then the waiter shows up with their food.

Regina tenses slightly at his arrival, pulling her hand swiftly away from Robin's grasp, and offering a tense smile to the man as he sets two plates of tacos down and asks if there's anything else they need.

"We're fine, thank you," Regina tells him, politely – that mask of composure snapping up and shielding her anxiety for a moment.

When he leaves, she clears her throat and drops her attention to her plate, and Robin watches as she frowns over her tacos before finally reaching for one. But before she grabs it, she stops, looking up at him and noting, "You're not eating."

He can't quite read the look on her face, the tone of her voice. Skeptical, maybe, and a little… betrayed?

"I wasn't sure if you wanted to finish counting first," he tells her with a shrug, grabbing a taco and taking a generous bite. It's surprisingly delicious, a good bit of kick to whatever sauce is on it, and a bit of crunch from some kind of julienned veg.

Regina says, "Oh," and lifts her own taco, muttering, "I thought—"

She doesn't finish, just takes a bite far daintier than his had been and chews.

"You thought what?" he asks around a mouthful of fish and tortilla, washing it down with another swallow of beer.

Regina sighs heavily, swallowing as she sets the taco down before telling him, "I really wish you didn't know about my… issues. With food. I didn't mean for you to, and…" She nearly squirms with discomfort as she admits, "it bothers me," and Robin wonders if maybe he shouldn't have said anything to her at all last night.

"And I wish that I hadn't mentioned that I was planning my food for the day earlier," she continues, fingers plucking up that spiraled straw wrapper again, and then setting it down almost immediately as if she's caught herself mid-sin.

"Planning isn't inherently bad," she says to him. "It's a healthy part of coping with anxiety; having a _plan_ for what to eat – healthy, reasonable options – is a tool to keep from making bad choices in the moment. " She drops to an irritated mutter to add, "My therapist _loves_ to make me plan the rest of my food for the day when I'm all worked up about something else. It's not necessarily indicative of… anything."

She's justifying, and for the life of him, he can't figure out why. It's not as if he'd asked her to explain herself, or accused her of starving herself just because she'd taken a moment to decide which taco she wanted to start with.

But then he remembers what she'd said last night – that he'd pay more attention to what she ate now that he knew – and he remembers his assurances that he wouldn't. And he hadn't, or he hadn't meant to, anyway, but suddenly that bit of suspicious betrayal makes more sense to him.

Robin takes the opportunity to remind her once again, "Regina, you don't have to justify your choices to me."

"You were watching me," she counters, and he frowns. Had he been? It had only been a moment, he hadn't meant to _watch_ her, he'd just been looking at her.

And he tells her so, says, "I was looking at you. I'm worried about you today, but not because of your food choices. That's between you and, I'd imagine, your therapist – I'd be in way out of my depth anyway." Regina scowls a little at that, and he continues, "I'm worried because I remember you on Sunday, saying you felt like you couldn't breathe. I remember how flushed you were, and how upset – and I couldn't handle the thought of you sitting alone, fifteen minutes away from me, feeling that way with nobody there to talk to."

She reaches for her seltzer and takes a gulp as he tells her, "And I'm worried that it's my fault you're feeling—"

"It's not, it's not just us—"

"Not 'just,' but some, yeah?" he asks her, and she grimaces. "So, I'm worried. I feel bad. I hate not being able to ease your troubles. So if I was watching you, that's why. But I wasn't policing your plate."

She nods at that, takes another anxious sip of her drink, and tells him, "I'm sorry. I'm not used to anyone… knowing. It's not something I share with people. My parents, my therapist, my GP… but that's about it. Daniel knew, but I never had to tell Graham. He just thought I was fussy about food. My mother is terrible about it – always has been. So I have some… hangups."

She fiddles with her fork, turns it over and over absently; she's so restless, so _fidgety_. It's not the gasping, breathless anxiety of the other night, but it's acute in a whole other way. A busy sort of tense energy that bleeds across the table and has even him starting to feel a bit on edge.

"She considered it… childish, and, um… silly. Inconvenient, and weak, and—"

"She's a cunt," he interrupts, and Regina's eyes widen slightly. He'd meant to say 'bitch', he really had, but… whoops. He mutters, "Sorry," and then reaches for his beer with an admission of, "That was a bit rude."

"A bit," Regina agrees, and then, "And a bit sexist," and now he's the one wincing. "I don't like to think my genitalia is an insult."

She's gone a bit frosty and self-righteous on him, and he feels like a git, but he's also rather grateful – she's dropped the fork for a moment, that nervous energy zeroed in on making it quite clear she won't tolerate him being quite that much of a wanker.

"It's not," he assures, "That's not what I… I'm sorry. But she's a cruel, judgemental hag, and I rather hate her."

Regina's frost melts away, a little smirk fighting onto her lips, as she assesses, "Better. And right now, I agree."

She reaches for her taco again, and Robin's heart skips a little beat. She lifts it, but not enough to take a bite yet, and Robin reaches for his own so that she doesn't feel unnecessarily watched again. Also, as it turns out, he's hungry.

"But can we pretend for a while that you don't know about… all that?" she requests. "Just until I work through… whatever this is, and get the anxiety under control. I like spending time with you, and I don't want to feel judged during every meal; that's hell for me. It's my whole adolescence."

He wants to tell her again that he's _not_ judging, but he's beginning to think that all the telling in the world won't do any good. He's caught out her secret, and she'll feel judged until she believes she's not, so alright, whatever she needs.

"Yeah, of course," he tells her, taking another bite.

Regina nods, and says, "Thank you," and does the same. It's another dainty little princess bite, difficult to manage with the tacos a bit over-sauced and drippy, but her next bite is better. Bigger. She glances at him again as she chews, and he feels awkward – hopes he's not looking at her _too much_ or _too long_ , not making her feel judged, or watched, or…

"Can we talk about something?" she asks after she swallows. "Anything – it doesn't matter. The silence makes me wonder what you're thinking, and then I think you're thinking about me, about" —she glances down at her plate— "And then, you know…"

She sucks in a quick breath, with a pointed look, and he finishes for her: "It makes you anxious."

Regina gives a short, scowling nod, and shoves the taco rather determinedly into her mouth for another bite. She's made it halfway through one taco while he's already scarfed down all of his first— He catches the thought, and dismisses it. He'd promised he wouldn't judge, wouldn't watch, just agreed to pretend he doesn't know. So who cares how fast she eats, or how much? That's not his to concern himself with today. Any day.

He asks her, "What do you want to talk about?" before taking another bite, and she shrugs, looks him over once, and then her gaze pauses.

She swallows, and asks, "Tell me about your tattoo? Why a lion?"

Robin grins, glad she's chosen something entirely neutral, and hopefully amusing on top of it.

"I lost a bet," he tells her, and she snorts, rolling her eyes.

"Of course you did."

"England made the quarterfinals in the World Cup, and I got a bit overzealous after a few pints, and declared if they didn't win the Cup, I'd get a tattoo of my mate's choosing," he explains, watching her smile at him and shake her head a little. "I'm lucky Will's a kind bloke, and I didn't end up with a giant cock or something."

She laughs at that, asks, "Why'd he choose the lion?" and then takes another bite.

"The team logo's three lions," he says, sipping his beer. "I don't know why he only chose one. I think it was in the book at the shop we went to. I was rather drunk at the time, so I don't really recall."

For a moment she just looks at him, biting the bottom edge of her smile, and then she says, "You're such an idiot. I love it."

"Well, I'm glad I can be of service," he chuckles, and he means it – if the silly antics of his younger days can draw her out of herself for a little while, he'll take the mild insults gladly.

"Tell me about the game," she urges, teasing, "What you remember of it, anyway."

So he spends the rest of lunch telling her about the pub they'd been at, and about watching the game with Will and John and their friend Alan. About silly bets, and missed goals, and his devastation when England had been knocked out of the running. And then she asks how they all met, and he tells her that, too, until he's cleared all of his tacos, and she's made it through two and a half of hers.

And then she realizes the time.

"Damnit," she mutters with a glance at her watch. "My lunch ends in five minutes; I need to get back."

Regina scans the restaurant for their waiter, but Robin tells her, "Go on and head back; I'll get lunch."

Regina frowns. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, it's fine," he promises. "Wouldn't want you to get scolded."

The smile she gives him is sweet and grateful, and she takes one final sip of her nearly spent seltzer, sucking up the last of it until air echoes hollowly in the straw.

She plucks her purse from the floor near her seat and shoulders it, then tells him, "Thank you for the distraction – and for not letting things be awkward, after last night." That smile goes a little nervous, her hand gripping the strap of her purse and then releasing again as she says, "I wasn't sure if we could do this – normal – after that. It's good to know we can. It helps me think things through."

She says that last bit with her gaze locked steadily on his, a bit of weight behind it, and he thinks that's probably promising. A good sign. (And he's glad he took the risk in coming here, to prove to Regina exactly that.)

Still, he urges her, "Take your time. There's no rush, yeah?"

"There is," she insists with a shake of her head. "There's too much up in the air for me right now, and it's all stressing me out. I want to figure out the things I can figure out, as soon as possible – even if that means agreeing _not_ to figure things out. But there are still things about that arrangement that don't sit right with me; I need some sleep, and then some time to think, and then I'll tell you. By Monday."

"Alright," he agrees, reaching across the table to grasp her hand and give her fingers a little squeeze. And then he's reminding her, "Go on, you're late."

Regina nods, tucks her hair behind her ear, and stands, her hand falling on his shoulder and giving it a squeeze as she passes and heads for the door. Robin waits until she's taken a few steps beyond him, and then he turns to watch her walk away.

**.::.**

Lunch helped.

She hadn't thought it would, seeing him – and when she thinks too hard on what a fool she'd made of herself (fidgety, and ridiculous, and fretting over _nothing_ ), she wants to sink into the floor in mortification. But it's Robin, and he'd been… himself. Judgment-free, and calm, and… comforting.

And finally, eventually, distracting in just the way she'd needed.

So it had helped, had sent her back into the office with her step a little lighter, her chest a little less tight. Not one hundred percent back to her normal self, but at least she didn't feel like there were spiders under her skin anymore.

She'd been able to focus on work, at least.

Regina is just about to reward herself with that mid-afternoon coffee run to Grumpy's when her phone rings, and _Dr. Hopper - Office_ appears on her screen.

She rushes to answer with an eager, "Hello?" and her day improves immeasurably when she finds Belle on the other end of the line, letting her know that Dr. Hopper has had a cancellation, and there's a 5:30 appointment available if she can make it.

Regina jumps at the chance, and spends the rest of the afternoon torn between blazing through her work as efficiently as possible in order to get out the door by five, and trying to figure out just what she's going to say to Archie when she gets there.

The more time she's had to think about it, the more convinced she's become that ending up in bed with Robin had been inevitable under the circumstances, that _she_ may have been able to delude herself about that, but Dr. Hopper should have known better. With all his talk of erratic behavior and seeking comfort in ways that she could beat herself up for later, he should have seen this coming.

And so, the further complication of this already complicated mess is on _his_ head as much as hers or Robin's, and she's ready to let him have it.

Her ire fuels her productivity, and has her out the door five minutes before she'd expected to be. That combined with her hitting the traffic pattern lottery and somehow making every green light between her office and Archie's has her there a solid fifteen minutes early.

Normally, the punctuality would please her, but today it just means more time spent spinning her wheels in his waiting room, coiling up her already wound nerves even more tightly as she takes the stairs up to the second floor and heads for his office door.

It swings open as she reaches for the knob, and Regina nearly collides with the woman making her way swiftly out – a redhead with a sharp sneer and blue eyes that are red-rimmed and glassy with recent tears, who shoots an entirely impolite, "Excuse me," at Regina and then pushes past her.

Regina turns slightly to watch her go, an odd feeling of familiarity tickling at the back of her brain. It's not until the other woman has nearly disappeared from sight that it clicks for Regina – the grocery store. The dairy case. Sidney's hand locked hard around her wrist.

And they have the same therapist.

What are the fucking odds.

Regina spares a moment to hope that Dr. Hopper can help her work through her infinite rudeness, and then she passes through the door herself.

The little waiting room is empty, save for Belle at the desk and, oddly, Pongo, who perks up when she walks in and trots immediately in her direction.

She gives him a little scratch as Belle offers her a cheerful hello, and, "Dr. Hopper will be just a few minutes."

Regina nods, says, "I figured. I'm early," as she makes her way to the desk.

Pongo follows her and then plunks down onto his rump next to her, his tail wagging and bumping against her heels.

"That's alright," Belle smiles, and something in her tone makes Regina feel like the receptionist is being _overly_ kind to her. It grates at her. Just because she needs to have a _conversation_ with her therapist less than twenty-four hours after the last one doesn't mean she needs to be… to be coddled.

Belle adds, "I'm just glad it all worked out," and Regina gives her a tight smile.

Pongo keeps up the steady, thumping swish of his tail against her for the whole time it takes her to sign in and confirm that, yes, her insurance is the same as it was at her last appointment – of course it is, it was _yesterday_ (it's a routine question, she's reminded). He even noses at her leg and gives a little whine for attention as she's shouldering her purse again.

"Someone's needy today," she tells him with an arched brow (but her lips curve at the corners, she can't help it).

Belle makes a noise and murmurs conspiratorially, "The last patient doesn't like dogs, so he's been stuck out here with me for an hour. I imagine he's happy to see another friendly face – especially one that usually gives him treats."

Of course that snooty bitch doesn't like dogs, Regina thinks, fighting the urge to roll her eyes over the whole thing before Belle slips her a Milk-Bone with a wry little smile.

Regina carries it all the way over to the little waiting room sofa and sits, Pongo hot on her heels the whole time. When she opens her palm, he scarfs the biscuit down immediately, nipping it from her fingers and crunching it happily before hopping up onto the sofa and plunking his head right down on her lap.

She narrows her eyes at him, but her lips curve up again at one corner as she asks the dog suspiciously, "Are you sure Dr. Hopper didn't send you out here to calm me down?"

Regina gets nothing in response but damp, velvety kisses against her fingertips, and her smile blooms just a little bit more.

"You looking for love, or crumbs?"

Pongo doesn't answer, just rolls onto his back so she can extend her scratches to his chest and his belly. For the next ten minutes, she does exactly that.

**.::.**

When Dr. Hopper finally appears to usher her into his office, her puppy-soothed anxiety spikes right back up to where it had been.

She's not even to the couch – Archie has barely closed the door – before she's firing her first shot, a vehemently bitten, "I had sex with Robin."

Archie pauses for a second on his way to his chair, and then he recovers and continues his journey, telling her, "Well, hello again, Regina; nice to see you, too."

Regina huffs a little, taking her seat and correcting tartly, "I'm sorry. Hello. Nice to see you." As Pongo hops up next to her again, she reiterates the more pertinent information: "I had _sex_ with _Robin_."

Archie settles into his chair with a little nod and says casually, "Okay, shall we talk about positions? Locations? Was it good?"

Regina just stares at him.

"Seriously?" she questions after a moment of silence. "That's your response?"

Dr. Hopper tilts his head slightly, asking, "Is there something else you would like me to say?"

He _cannot_ be serious.

Anger spikes in her again, fueling her words as she accuses, " _You_ told me to call him, to reach out and ask for the comfort that I wanted, and I ended up _having sex with him_. So, yes, I thought maybe you would have something more to say than a request for the highlights," she seethes, "considering it was your terrible advice that led me to this bad decision."

That gets his attention, draws his mouth into a frown, knits his brow in confusion.

"Why exactly would you classify this as a 'bad' decision?" he asks her, and Regina's scoff pops out before she can tamp it down.

"Well, I certainly don't think you can call sleeping with the neighbor you're trying to stay friends with a _good_ decision, do you?"

He relaxes a little at that, giving her a small, sympathetic smile as he tells her yet again, "Sex is not a bad thing, Regina, as long as it's consensual..."

"But it's sex that can never go anywhere," she protests. And then she thinks of Robin's suggestion, and how sweet and soothing he'd been at lunch, and all the things she's been talking about with Archie. She frowns, her anxiety mounting as she admits, "Or maybe it can, I don't know – I feel like I don't know _anything_ anymore!"

As usual, Dr. Hopper takes her little outburst in stride, all steady calmness as he jots something into his notes and asks her, "Did it feel good? Was it enjoyable?"

Regina's frown pinches harder and he urges, "Don't think about all the emotional reasons you 'can't' or it's 'bad'. I just want you to focus for a minute on how it felt for you, in that moment."

She snorts, muttering, "You sound like Robin," before reluctantly admitting, "And it felt great."

"So explain to me how that is something that's 'bad'," he urges again.

"Because this can't go anywhere," she repeats, starting to feel a bit like a broken record. How many times have they been over this now? "I said I wasn't going to do this, we weren't going to do this. I wasn't going to put us in this situation."

Pongo shifts beside her, plopping his head into her lap; Regina drops her fingers absently to the back of his neck and scratches restlessly.

As she does, Dr. Hopper reminds again, "If you are both consenting adults, and you know the parameters of the relationship, then there is nothing 'bad' about it. It's human. It's normal."

Regina drops her gaze to the top of Pongo's head, watching her own fingers trace trails over his coat. She doesn't want to hear that this is normal; the way she feels lately is _not_ normal.

"And if I may offer an opinion," Dr. Hopper continues, "this is something that might be 'good' for you."

Regina looks up abruptly at that, her face twisted into a scowl.

"How is one night of weakness with a man I can't date ' _good'_ for me?"

"It can help relieve tension," he tells her simply. "And the endorphins released during intercourse can help relieve stress, which you have certainly had an abundance of lately."

She snorts at that – understatement.

And then Dr. Hopper asks the million dollar question: "Are you certain it's only going to be the one night?"

"I don't know," she admits. She's not even really sure she can call it "one" _now_ , if she's being honest – it's not like last night was the first time something has happened between them. "Another night of weakness" would be more fitting. And with their track record, it's probably ridiculous to pretend it will never happen again. But it _shouldn't_ , they shouldn't be doing this...

"Have you discussed it with Robin?" Dr. Hopper prompts, and Regina feels the urge to squirm.

She's thinking of Robin's proposal when she tells him, "In a manner of speaking…"

And since that's the main reason she's here today – to talk to Archie about whether or not she can accept something so selfish – she takes a breath and shares the details: "He suggested that we table all the emotional baggage of this situation for a month, and just… go with the flow." Her fingers find silky dog ears and fiddle with them as she explains, "He doesn't want to cause me any more stress than I already have, so he said that whatever I need on any given day, he's fine with – whether that's sex, or friendship, or him leaving me alone. I just have to tell him what I need and he'll do it."

Dr. Hopper scribbles something blindly into his notes, his attention on her the whole time, face drawn into an interested frown.

Regina continues, telling him, "And then he wants us to sit down and figure everything out in October, once things have calmed down and I've had some time to think everything through without so much pressure, and without having to feel guilty after every time something happens between us."

Another note gets jotted onto the paper, something short, Dr. Hopper's brows rising and falling slightly. He looks… intrigued? Thoughtful? Not as disapproving as she'd thought he might.

But she can't quite read him, and he seems to still be waiting on her to finish her thoughts, which she does, asking, "But isn't that selfish? Wouldn't it be awful of me to agree to that? Isn't it unfair to him?"

Archie sets his pen aside for a moment, and shakes his head slightly.

"It was his suggestion; he set up parameters and a timeframe, so in this case, no, I don't think it's selfish," Archie tells her, and something unknots in her middle, her breath leaving in a slow exhale. "He knows what he's getting into, what I'm more concerned with right now is what _you_ want. How do _you_ feel about Robin's suggested arrangement?"

"Selfish," she admits, the tense tightness of impending tears squeezing her throat as she adds, "And guilty. Because I want to say yes."

The last words leave her in a whispered rush, and she lifts a hand to brush at the tear that has managed to leak out before she swallows hard to push the rest of them down deep. She's not crying over this again.

"We keep talking about this – here – you and me," she continues, "and every time we do, I am less and less sure of what's right, or what's real, and then I'm with him and I don't know what to do. And not having to know what to do, to just… do whatever I _want_ to do, whatever feels good… That's very attractive right now."

It feels silly, and weak, and… not like her, wanting all this. But what's so wrong with wanting to be with someone who will drop everything and drive to meet her at lunch, just so she's not sitting alone in the middle of her anxiety? Someone who cares about her son, about her, who's just… right. Shouldn't she be allowed to want that and have that for a little while – without having to worry that it's going to bring everything crashing down around her?

"Then what's stopping you?" Dr. Hopper asks her. "Robin is clearly okay with that arrangement; he was the one who suggested it."

"I'm not making good decisions – you told me that less than twenty-four hours ago," Regina reminds him. "I don't trust myself to make healthy choices when it comes to Robin – I've been trying, but every time I try, I fail."

Even today, even just hours ago at lunch, she'd been ridiculously weak and given into the urge to call him, instead of just dealing with everything herself like she did before he spun her head so far around.

"I suggested that you were exhibiting abnormal behaviour, that's different," Dr. Hopper corrects her. And then he tilts his head slightly and suggests, "Maybe this is the sort of opportunity you need, to take some time and not have to worry about making big decisions for a while. Robin is offering you a few weeks without labels, to allow yourself to follow your feelings and your instincts, so that maybe you can start trusting yourself and the choices you are making again."

Huh. Well, that… that sounds far less selfish than it all had in her head.

She chews her lip for a moment, gives Pongo a slow scratch, and then looks back up at Archie with a cautiously hopeful, "It's not an unhealthy arrangement?"

"Are you two both consenting adults?" he asks her plainly.

"Yes."

"Are you both aware of the expectations and the guidelines?"

"Yes."

"Are you hurting anyone?"

"I don't want to hurt _him_ ," Regina insists. "Or me."

"And you haven't, and you don't have any intention to," Dr. Hopper assures her gently, offering her one of his kind smiles. "So no, I don't think it's an unhealthy arrangement."

Regina blows out a heavy breath of relief, nodding – that's not exactly the answer she thought she'd be getting tonight. She'd wanted to say yes so badly, and had felt so guilty about how _selfish_ that seemed – she'd half-expected Archie to tell her the same. That she needed to make an actual choice—plant a flag in one side or the other of this whole thing, and stick with it—rather than putting it all off for another month.

Being told she can have this if she so chooses is both freeing and, for some reason, terrifying.

She doesn't say anything right away, and Dr. Hopper takes the opportunity to fill the silence with another question: "Before you convinced yourself it was a bad choice, how did you feel about being with Robin? You said it was… 'great'... but how did you _feel_ about it?"

"For the five minutes before the afterglow wore off and I realized I'd crossed the line I didn't want to cross?" Regina asks, shrugging jerkily.

She thinks back to last night, tries to push past the stain of her anxiety to the moments before, the feelings underneath. To Robin pressed up against her, Robin inside her, his lips and hands on her. How had _that_ felt?

Regina speaks slowly, softly, telling Dr. Hopper, "When I was with him, I felt…" —she presses her lips together, searches for the right word— "connected. And… cared for. And… beautiful," she admits, with a little smile, thinking of the way he'd _looked_ at her, run his hands along her, _spoken_ about her. "He thinks I'm gorgeous. And he looked at my naked body like it was…" She lets out a chuckle that's mostly air, then finishes with, "incredible. He made me feel…"

She trails off, shaking her head and asking sadly, "Do you know how long I've fought with my body? Fought to feel like it was even okay, _good enough,_ much less amazing?"

"I do," Dr. Hopper confirms with a nod. He's been listening intently to her, but he takes a moment to jot something in his notes, and then he says, "You mentioned last week how positive Robin is for your body image, even if he's… unaware of your history? I can imagine how that would make sex a positive experience."

Regina thinks of lunch, and scoffs a little before she mutters, "He's not so unaware anymore."

Archie's brows rise slightly, an invitation to elaborate.

So she does, running her fingers through her hair with a shallow sigh, and explaining, "Apparently, when we were high on Sunday, I said something about having been hospitalized when I was younger – about Mother criticizing me dieting myself into the hospital. He made the leap that it wasn't just a _diet_. So now he knows about that, and we've talked about it, some."

Much to her chagrin.

"I'm embarrassed that he knows, that I slipped to him like that. And even so, he still made me feel the way he did." The absolutely crippling anxiety had come later, but last night? In the moment? God, he'd made her feel amazing. "So do I _want_ to feel beautiful and sexy and close and warm again the way I did with him? Yes," she admits. "But… I don't know if we'll do it again."

"Why not?" Archie asks her, because of course he does.

"You know why," she insists, her frustration bleeding through again. "I don't want him to get hurt. I don't want _me_ to get hurt."

Dr. Hopper nods slowly, tapping his pen lightly against the pad in his lap, and then he says, "It seems to me like the way you're doing things now has hurt you already. What's the harm in trying a different approach?"

Regina lets out a rather undignified snort, and Pongo lifts his head to look at her.

"A different approach?" she questions, brows rising. "That's what you call inviting the neighbor over for a midnight cry and booty call?" She shakes her head and studies the man for a moment, then asks him, "Why are you pushing me toward this?"

Because for the life of her, she cannot figure out why he's so gung-ho about a relationship that is so goddamned complicated.

"I'm not pushing you anywhere, Regina," Dr. Hopper tells her. She's not sure she believes that in the slightest. "Your decisions are your decisions, I merely try to point out areas for your consideration and help steer you in a healthy direction."

"I've done a lot of considering where Robin is concerned," she tells him shortly. "I still think not being with him is best for everyone."

"It is not your job to protect everyone, Regina," Dr. Hopper tells her.

She bristles at that, something in the statement making her hackles rise, making her spine stiffen.

"It's my job to protect _me_ , isn't it?" she questions. "And Henry. I can't date Robin, I can't bring him home, I can't marry him. So what is so bad about saying that we can't pursue something, when we _can't?"_

"Because you obviously have feelings for him, and fighting it _is_ hurting you," Archie tells her, all strength and certainty.

She feels that telltale prickle at the backs of her eyeballs and curses this stupid exhaustion for making her so prone to tears.

But her voice is steady (if a bit resigned) when she says to him, "So I'm hurt either way."

That seems to be her fate lately. Hurt if she moves one way, hurt if she moves the other. No matter what avenue she takes, it always seems to be the wrong one for someone.

"What makes you so sure you'll end up hurt if you pursue this?" Archie asks her, and Regina just feels tired. Like they're talking in circles. She drops her attention back to Pongo, and his soft ears, and his little snowman-shaped spot, and Dr. Hopper just keeps talking to her. "We talked about this in our previous sessions, the likelihood of your mother remembering him is slim to none. There is no danger from your parents in that regard. What are your other reasons?"

"We _disagreed_ about this in our earlier sessions," she reminds him, sparing him an irritated glance through her lashes before turning her attention back to the dog. "I still don't want her anywhere near him, not after what I found out she's capable of. And I don't want her near me. Or my son, or my father. But I don't want to talk about her today."

She's too tired. She doesn't want to ride this same fucking merry-go-round, and she doesn't want to _think_ about her cunt of a mother. (That's an awful thing to call someone, an insult that always chases angry heat up the back of her neck, but, God, a part of her had thrilled to hear Robin bite it so bitterly at lunch. If anyone deserves it, it's Mother, and it's now.)

Archie is surprisingly accommodating, acquiescing with, "Okay, then we don't have to talk about her today. But I do think she is present within this issue for you, whether you like it or not."

"This, and every other issue," Regina sighs bitterly. And she is so _tired_ of having issues. Of hurt, and confusion, and anxiety. She just wants it all to end.

She doesn't want to _be_ this person anymore. She doesn't want to feel the way she does – she doesn't want to be someone who can't make it through the day over something as stupid and miniscule as exhaustion, or, God, having had _sex_ with someone. She wants to feel strong again, and confident, and capable. Wants to feel like _herself_ , not like a woman who calls her friend-with-benefits from a solo lunch table because she's gotten so into her own head that she needs a distraction.

That's not who she wants to be – this weak, desperate person.

"Sometimes I think…" she begins (because Dr. Hopper hasn't said anything more, and she imagines he's waiting on her to choose a new topic to fill their time), "that maybe Robin makes me weaker? I used to handle everything in my life myself, and now… something goes wrong and I reach for the phone, or I walk next door. Even if it's just to take Henry, even if it's not for me. I don't even have to ask anymore, he just offers," — _I'll be there in ten minutes—_ "if he knows I'm having a hard day. I think I rely on him too much for someone I'm not actually dating."

She glances up at Dr. Hopper again and finds him watching her with a knowing curve of lip.

Regina scowls, and mutters, "But you're going to tell me I'm wrong again, aren't you?"

Dr. Hopper bobs his head once, and says, "Some people would argue that makes you stronger – allowing people in, developing a support system, allowing someone to focus on your needs while you focus on theirs."

"Is that what I'm doing?" she asks him tartly, because it sure as hell doesn't feel that way – not the last part, at least. "Am I really focusing on _his_ needs? Or am I just being selfish and indulgent? I know I don't want to—" She sucks in a frustrated breath and course-corrects, because let's be honest, they both know what she _wants_ to do. " _Had no intention at the time to" —_ she amends— "pursue a relationship with him, but I slept with him anyway. _I'm_ the one who told him that kissing was therapist-approved, _I'm_ the one who wanted more, _I'm_ the one who asked for sex. Isn't that selfish?"

Dr. Hopper is right about one thing – Robin spends a hell of a lot of time focusing on her needs, but does she really reciprocate? And if she doesn't, what does that say about her, other than that she's self-centered and terrible?

She hears the thoughts, and thinks of the rubber band still hanging around her wrist. She owes it a snap – probably owes it about fifty today, but one will have to do. She just prays Dr. Hopper doesn't make a big deal about it.

Thankfully, he doesn't. He watches her tug the band out and let it snap back, but he doesn't address it – in fact, he doesn't even wait until she's finished to respond.

"Did you let Robin think that anything about your relationship had changed beyond the physical intimacy?" he asks as the rubber band pops against her skin. "Did you give the impression that your thoughts or feelings on the matter had changed beforehand?"

"There was no 'beforehand'," she tells him, "It was just supposed to be some comfort, a few kisses, that's it. But as usual, we got carried away, and…"

 _She_ got carried away. Robin followed the rules like a champ, until she told him to throw them out the window.

"I told him I didn't want sex before he came over, I told him it wasn't for that," she says, her fingers restless along Pongo's collar as self-loathing blooms in her belly. "And then I changed the rules on him, like I always do. And he went along with it, like he always does. And now he wants that to be the arrangement all the time, like that's at all normal, or acceptable, and…" Air leaves her in a disgruntled rush. "He said it's fine if nothing changes. It's fine if it was just a one-time thing. It's fine if I want a month of space, or a month of sex, or a month of friendship, but… But me setting all the parameters is selfish, it just _is_."

"If he's clearly okay with the parameters of your relationship – and from his suggestion it seems that he is – then how were you being selfish?" Archie asks her. "I mean unless you were _selfish_ during intercourse, but that's a different matter we can discuss."

It's meant to make her laugh, she thinks – but it only tugs out the barest hint of a smirk.

"I just feel... conflicted," she tells him.

And, predictably, he follows her up with, "What do you feel conflicted about?"

"I _do_ want more. I _do_ want to do it again," she confesses. "But I also want to be friends. I think?" Her brow furrows, and she gives Pongo a little push, so she can lean forward and brace her elbows against her knees, drop her head into her hands and bitch, "I don't know anymore. I used to know exactly why I wasn't pursuing things with him, but now you put all these doubts in my head, and…" She rakes her fingers through her hair, raises her head, and admits, "I don't know. But I do know that I care about him, and Henry adores him, and I can't be with him unless I know I can _be_ with him. With this one foot in, one foot out, I feel like everyone's getting hurt, and it's my fault. It's to accommodate _my_ feelings." A little kernel of anger pops open in her chest, steam rising up and out of it, leaving her lips in a bitter and burnt out, "But I didn't do this to us – I am not the one who robbed my parents, and I am not the one who lied about it."

When Archie asks her, "Do you think you will ever be able to forgive him for that?" he does it plain as day, and simple as the sunshine, and it floors her.

"I…" She blinks; she swallows. "I have forgiven him."

"Are you sure about that?"

Is she? If you'd asked her a day ago, six hours ago, one hour ago, she'd have said yes. But she can still feel that hiss of anger in her chest, and it occurs to her suddenly that it isn't the first time she's felt it. That little hot spring of bitterness over what he'd done wells up every now and then, brief and hot – but it always sinks back down under the surface where it belongs.

She tells Archie cautiously, "I thought I had."

"But?"

"But…" It makes her heart pound, makes her palms sweat, but for a moment, Regina lets herself lean into the anger. Lets it run her mouth, and pump her blood, and what spills out of her surprises her: "If he hadn't done what he did, I would have a man in my life who understands me, and who makes me feel good about myself, and who loves my son. And I wouldn't have to fight it every day."

And the fact that she does have to makes her _angry_. The way she feels right now, about everything her in life, every stupid compounded thing that only becomes more convoluted and complex with Robin's involvement – all of that makes her _angry._

"Except that's stupid, because it's not true," she realizes. She can be angry at Robin for what he did all she wants, but not doing it wouldn't have fixed anything. "If he hadn't done what he did, he'd still be with Marian. I'd never have met him. So why am I angry about it?"

"I don't know; why are you angry about it?" Dr. Hopper asks her, and she could just about punch him.

She settles for a glare, and a salty, "I hate when you do that."

"Do what?"

"Answer my questions with the same question," she tells him, as if he doesn't already know damn well what she means. And it's unfair, that he always knows and she never gets to. In fact, "Why don't I ever get to ask the questions?"

"Because I'm the one making the big bucks, and you're the one in this equation who needs the answers," Archie tells her simply. "The questions help you get there."

"Well, since I am the one paying the big bucks," she turns it around on him, emphasizing, " _in your professional opinion,_ why do you think I'm angry? I know you have a theory."

He can't _not_ , what with all his notes, and his commentary, and his years of experience in both the human conscience in general, and hers in particular.

Sure enough, he doesn't disappoint.

Dr. Hopper sets his pen aside for a moment, sits back in his chair a bit, and tells her what he thinks: "Honesty is important to you. You grew up in a home where you never knew what the truth was. You were raised in a way that left you unable to trust and rely on the people who were supposed to love and support you the most."

Oh. _Oh_. She feels that hot prickle of tears again and presses her lips together, but this time it does no good.

Her eyes blur with wet as he keeps talking, telling her, "Yes, we have talked about that and you have moved past it; you have worked hard to make sure your own son does not have to face those same challenges. But it is still a problem for you in your personal life, with those you care about."

That unexpected anger is suddenly drowned out by a wave of breathless pain. Some wellspring deep in her middle opening up and sending hurt gushing up through her, until it leaves in a gasping, "I asked him. I _asked_ him if there was something I didn't know. I knew there was something and I asked him." Her throat tightens and she has to swallow down the tension before she can voice the last part: "And he lied to me. Right to my face."

She remembers it, clear as day: Robin sitting across from her in a little Italian restaurant, the pinch in his expression as he'd said _I'm afraid I'm going to cause you pain_.

She remembers, because it had seemed so silly at the time – pain is a part of life, of love. She'd felt recklessly enamoured that night, and the idea of running from him because there was a chance he'd bruise her heart some day had seemed ridiculous.

But he hadn't been afraid he was going to cause her pain, that was bullshit – he had _known_ he would. He had a goddamn money-back guarantee that he would suckerpunch her right in the heart, and he looked at her and told her he was holding back because he was _afraid_?

The tears burn hot down her cheeks, and she wipes furiously at them, letting the acrid burn of betrayal sear through her properly for the first time in weeks.

Archie reaches for the tissues, handing one to her as he asks, "If he had told you the truth sooner would you have responded any differently?"

"I wouldn't have dated him at all," Regina insists, wiping at her cheeks. "I wouldn't have let myself think of him that way. I wouldn't have let him get so close."

And God, he is – so close to her, buried deep down right alongside her heart. Nesting there, putting down roots, coiling around and around that relentlessly pumping muscle until he'd fused himself so deeply that she can't unravel it all without searing pain.

It's all too easy to answer Archie's next question: "Knowing him now, being as close to him as you are, do you regret it?"

"No," she says, sniffling and trying to stifle her tears. "I want to but... no. I don't."

How could she, now? After everything they've been through together the last few months?

There's a particular gentleness of tone that Dr. Hopper uses when they've scraped open a particularly raw wound, and he uses it now to ask her, "Then why can't you forgive him?"

"I don't know," she warbles, blowing her nose daintily, and then telling him, "You're right. It's different with him, it's not like Graham. It's more. We're not even together, and it's more. And he lied to me. And I know why he did it, I understand, I know what he was trying to protect."

She tries to think of Roland, of dimpled cheeks and that sweet smile, and the way Robin chases him and Tuck around the yard playing Outlaws and Sheriffs – she _knows_ the reason for his lies, but it doesn't change the truth of them for _her_. And that truth is suddenly crushing: "But he hurt me. On purpose. I mean, he… he knew. He let me feel all of this and he knew he was lying to me. He knew it would hurt, and he let it happen anyway. It was selfish – _he_ was selfish," she realizes with another hissing steam of anger, her temper flashing as she bites, " _He_ is the selfish one. He gave me all of this and then he took it away."

Pongo's head presses to her thigh again, but she's suddenly too furious to care. Her fingers are shaking, so she clenches them into tight fists, just as Archie tilts his head ever so slightly to the side, and asks her another question.

"Did he take it away, Regina? Because, to me, it sounds like it's still there."

And just like that, the bubble of her fury pops, dissolving around her in a way that has her unsure quite what to say.

Robin gave her all of this – trust, and understanding, a shoulder to lean on, affection, and passion, and a man who loves her son without being asked to – and he'd been lying to her face the whole time. Had lied even after the cards were on the table, even once he had to have known he couldn't get away with it.

It had been the end of them, and yet…

He'd taken Henry for the night just two days ago, so she could rest. Had held her hair back while she vomited through excruciating pain, had rubbed her back. Had taken her son shopping just weeks ago, and spoiled him, with his fancy guitar, and their matching shoes. Had crawled into her bed last night and made her feel like she'd had shimmering, pulsing stardust in her veins while she came around him. Had come to her without being asked just this morning and listened to her problems, and tried to calm her nerves. He'd accepted every dark and ugly part of her without judgement – and that had all been after the lies.

"I…" she manages, floundering, until she comes up with, "We're not together."

"Yes, you have made that abundantly clear," Dr. Hopper acknowledges. "What I don't understand is why."

Regina swallows thickly, and becomes suddenly very interested in the stretch of Pongo's neck.

"From what you've said, Robin wishes to pursue the relationship, and now you wish to pursue the relationship." She inhales a breath to protest, and then realizes it's useless – she'd said it herself already; there's no use denying what she wants. "You seem to be grasping at straws, looking for reasons to keep yourself from trying; looking for a way to prevent yourself from allowing someone to love you in order to prevent the minuscule chance that you might get hurt, despite all the other benefits being in a relationship provides."

She hears 'miniscule chance you might get hurt' and nearly misses the rest of Archie's sentence in her rush to defend herself with a fiercely bitten off, "It's not a miniscule chance, I've already gotten hurt."

And oh, God, how she hurts, now that she's finally letting herself feel the full brunt of it for the first time in weeks. Now that she's not trying to tell herself to move on, or make amends, to do anything but _feel_ this, right now, in this moment, in a safe place.

"This is not the same," Dr. Hopper tells her, taking her anger in stride. "Yes, Robin lied to you, and that hurts. It always hurts when someone you trust betrays that trust, but sadly that often happens at one point or another in relationships; you just have to work through it."

Regina scowls – it's not a pout, because she isn't a child. It's a scowl, a deep scowl. Maybe a sulk, at best. She doesn't want to hear "work through it" when she's so freshly aware of how deep the cuts had run. She wants to wallow for a little while longer, let all of this mad bleed itself out before she has to do something as mature as "work through it."

And she really doesn't want to hear him say what he says next: "In my opinion, what you're really afraid of is being hurt again. Like you were with Daniel."

She doesn't want to hear it, because she's too raw to pretend he's wrong this time, and the assessment has her overworked, overtired, over-emotional brain flashing with images of Robin dead behind the wheel of the car, Robin moments from execution, Robin behind bars.

"I don't want to lose him," she confesses, tears surging up and spilling over again – but only for a moment. She wipes at them as she tries to wrangle them back under control, tears and tension making her voice wobble as she tells him, "Losing Daniel was hell, and I… I don't want to go through that ever again."

"I know you don't," Archie tells her sympathetically. "Opening your heart again – truly – after that kind of loss is often frightening."

"Am I allowed to need more time to deal with that fear?" she asks, because now she gets it – sort of. To an extent. That little flash of terror that had accompanied the relief at the idea that she could take Robin up on this offer makes more sense once she's forced to admit that loving him means she has to risk losing him, too. And she's just… not sure she's ready for that.

"You've been dealing with it for years," he says, as if she needs a reminder of that. "Grief is a process, it takes time, it's something that never truly heals. But, Regina, I think we can both agree that Daniel wouldn't want you to spend the rest of your life afraid and alone, especially because of him." Dr. Hopper pauses just a moment, and then adds, "He wouldn't want that for your son either."

"I know. I know he wouldn't," she says with one last (she hopes) sniffle and wipe of tears. "And I wasn't alone; I've been – I had Graham." Graham, who hadn't had her crying on her therapist's couch for two weeks straight. "I don't know why I didn't feel like this with Graham. At least, not this much. I don't remember being this scared – and Graham's job involved getting shot at."

All Dr. Hopper has to say to that is, "There's a difference between having someone in your life who fulfills your physical needs and having a completely fulfilling relationship."

It doesn't sit well with her – that assessment of Graham, of the significant stretch of her life she spent with him.

"That makes it sound like Graham was just sex," she argues. "He wasn't just sex. I cared about Graham; what we had was…" A pale imitation of what she has now, she realizes. Still, she fights for it, says, "We had a good relationship."

Archie says nothing, just lifts his brows halfway to his hairline.

"We _did_ ," Regina insists. "We let it go on too long, maybe, but it was good." It _was_ , but even she isn't convinced by the tone in which she says it, so she concedes to a downgrade of, "It was fine. And I never had to feel like _this_ about him, so to be honest it's looking better and better in retrospect."

"And is that what you want?" Archie asks her. "A lifetime of mutual 'fineness?' Or do you want something more?"

Regina lets out a breath, something inside of her deflating as she lets herself admit, "I'd like a little less pain. The person I am right now… I don't like her. I don't want to feel like this anymore."

Archie nods slowly – not an agreement, she knows, just an acknowledgement. And then he tells her in that particularly gentle tone: "Then maybe you should reconsider the parameters of your relationship. Think about what is really causing you pain with your current dynamic. Whether you take Robin up on his offer or not, I'd like you to spend some time thinking on that for homework before our next session."

Dr. Hopper writes something down in his notebook, and then closes it, and it's only then that she looks at the clock and realizes they're almost out of time.

Regina leans forward to nab an extra tissue, carefully dabbing beneath her eyes to fix any smudged makeup.

She exhales deeply again, and thinks maybe it _is_ time she really reconsider her approach to all of this. She can't keep pretending nothing is happening here, nothing _will_ happen here. Whether she wanted the goalposts to move or not, they have, they are.

So maybe it's time she started to look at what her relationship with Robin _is_ and _can be_ , rather than what it _shouldn't_ or _can't_ be.

Archie says her name, pulling her attention back to him so he can tell her, "I'd also like you to do something that brings you pleasure, no strings attached, not something that will have lingering guilt creeping up in the back of your mind; just one thing that is just for you that you get enjoyment from."

Regina's brows creep up incredulously. He did not.

"Something that brings me pleasure with no strings, huh?" she questions pointedly, and Dr. Hopper chuckles softly and shakes his head.

"That's not what I was implying – but it would be a perfectly valid option if you so chose, as long as it won't cause that guilt," he tells her. And then he insists, "I want you to do something enjoyable _for you_. It can involve another person, but it doesn't have to. It could just as easily be something you do on your own. I want you to take some time for some real, much needed self-care and enjoyment, whatever that looks like to you."

Right. Self-care. That's what he'd meant.

It shouldn't – doesn't – surprise her that he's mandating she make time for self-care right now. It doesn't take a trained professional to take one look at her and see she's been letting it slide.

She'll make time for it – starting tonight. A long shower (she'd probably fall asleep and drown in her bath, as tired as she is), maybe some lavender oil on her pulse points, and then a sleeping pill, and a good night's rest.

And maybe over the weekend, she'll treat herself somehow. She'll think of something – when she's not so tired, and not so depleted.

"I can do that," she assures him with a half-hearted smile. "Thank you for squeezing me in. I know I was probably… a bit demanding this morning."

Dr. Hopper just smiles and tells her, "You've been under a lot of mental stress – and physical, this week, I'd say. But I feel like this session was helpful for the former, at least."

"Very," she agrees. "I have a lot to think about, but I feel less… overwhelmed."

"I'm glad," he tells her, and then he asks if she's picked up her prescription.

"I'm stopping now," she tells him – the pharmacy will be open a little while longer, she has time to stop on the way. "I think I'll order in tonight, for Henry, and just… sleep."

"After your dinner?"

It's not so much a question as a gentle reminder that it's important she _has_ dinner, and they both know it.

So Regina nods and confirms, "After my dinner, I will sleep."

He offers a satisfied, "Good," and then she's gathering her things and saying her goodbyes.

**.::.**

The Rabbit Hole is a lively place tonight, with a band on stage and customers packed in around tables and milling around the bar.

Robin is busy pouring pint after pint, mixing cocktail after cocktail, offering up charming smile after charming smile, even to the handful of patrons who seem to have left their tipping skills (but sadly not their drinking skills) out in the parking lot.

As such, he doesn't notice her right away.

Or rather, he doesn't have any idea how long Regina's been waiting when he finally catches sight of her near the far end of the bar, her head tilted slightly as she watches him.

Robin's heart pumps a little harder at the sight of her, at the glimpse of a smile on her lips – a smile that thankfully spreads slightly as he walks toward her.

He wasn't expecting her tonight, and he tries not to get his hopes up for what it means that she's shown up here (she's anxious again, he can see it in the tight corners of her smile, in the breath she sucks in and lets out as he takes the last few steps toward her).

"Hi," he greets warmly, leaning across the bar to be nearer to her. Her answering _Hi_ gets lost in the din of the crowd, but he responds anyway with, "This is a pleasant surprise. I thought you'd be asleep by now."

(Well, maybe not quite yet – it's not even half seven.)

"Can we talk for a minute?" she asks him with a little wince, raising her voice this time to better be heard.

Robin glances back at the bar – the very packed bar, where no less than three people are trying to catch his eye. Of all the bloody times…

"August is on break," he tells her, asking, "Can you hang out for a few minutes until he's back?"

"Yeah, of course," she nods, and he notices that she's still gripping the strap of her purse, still standing stock straight.

Fuck. Why does he get the feeling this will not be a pleasant conversation?

Still, he offers, "Can I get you a drink while you wait?" And then off her nod, "Cider?"

Regina shakes her head, and tells him, "Whiskey."

Right. Definitely not going to be a good conversation.

He turns to pour her a measure of Bulleit, and readies himself for the inevitable: she's not going to be taking his arrangement. He tries not to let his disappointment show as he slides her drink across the bar, then excuses himself to take care of his other customers.

It had seemed so promising this morning – despite her hesitation, she'd been warm and pliant. Intimate. And then this afternoon, she'd seemed so pleased that they'd been able to manage friendship, so grateful in the end that he'd come.

He'd thought for sure she'd say yes, with a little bit of time to come around to all the reasons why a month of no-pressure hooking up was just what they needed.

But now she's here, and nervous, and… perhaps he'd read it all wrong.

He's tempted to skive off the whole conversation, to tell her that tonight isn't a good time to talk, after all – they're too busy, he doesn't have the time to spare. Make her sit on it until the weekend, and then maybe with a few days' distance she'll change her mind again and see he's right about this.

But he can't bring himself to actually do it.

She'd been too keyed-up this afternoon; she needs this settled. And if he loves her (and he does, desperately), he needs to do whatever he can to help her feel that way.

So.

He pours his pints, and mixes a whiskey sour, and a sex on the beach, and a Long Island iced tea.

And when August comes back, Robin tries to fight the nervous swoop of his stomach, and leans in close to say, "Regina's here. Can I take ten? We need to talk."

August turns his head to find her at the bar, staring intently into a whiskey she's already drunk half of.

"I don't suppose this has anything to do with whatever had you cutting out early last night?" August asks him, knowingly.

Robin scratches at the back of his neck, offers a guilty grimace, and admits, "Might do, yeah."

August just scoffs a laugh, offers up his office if they need a quiet place to talk, and orders, "Take fifteen – no more than twenty."

Robin thinks darkly that it shouldn't take that long for her to squash his hopes.

But what he says is, "Thanks; I'll be back as soon as I can."

He serves the Shocktop he'd been pulling, and then makes his way to Regina, catching her attention and then nodding in the direction of the back hallway.

She slugs back the rest of her whiskey and sets it on the bar, and meets him at the hall a minute later with a tentative smile that doesn't hold.

Bloody lovely.

They retreat to the office in silence, the din of the bar growing muted and distant as Robin closes the door behind them and shoves his hands into his pockets, his shoulders lifting as he asks her, "So, what did you want to talk about?"

No use drawing this out.

He watches as Regina takes a deep breath in, lets it out, her gaze steady somewhere in the middle of his chest.

And then she looks straight up into his eyes and says, "Yes."

Wait, did she say— "Yes?" he repeats.

Regina nods, and tells him, "I took the day to think about it, and to talk it over, and… yes. One month, no labels, we'll just… take it as it comes."

His lowered hopes shoot back up, a sort of internal bungee spring of disappointment-turned-elation that has Robin smiling his surprise and asking a pleased, "You're certain?"

He regrets it as soon as the words leave his lips, because what if she says no? Why on earth would he give her an opportunity to change her mind?

But she just nods, and gives him another one of those tense smiles.

"I am, but" —of course there's a 'but'— "there are some things I need to say to you first."

Robin sobers at that, his smile faltering as he says, "Alright. That sounds… ominous."

Regina's brows rise and fall in acknowledgement, her arms lifting to cross over her chest, fingers gripping at her biceps.

"I care about you, a lot," she begins, and Robin braces himself internally – in his experience, a conversation that begins like that doesn't often end well. "You matter so much to me, _too_ much sometimes, and I want to make sure you know that, because…"

Regina sucks in another breath, lets it whoosh out and says, "Because I'm pissed at you, and I need to tell you why, or this will never work. If we're going to do this, I need to get this off my chest, so I can let it go."

Robin deflates a little, his shoulders sagging. Pissed at him?

"Is this because of this afternoon?" he asks her. "I know you told me not to come, but—"

"No, Robin," she assures, "It's not about that."

One of those crossed arms works its way free and reaches out toward him, so Robin draws his hand free of its pocket to meet her halfway. Her fingers are a little clammy in his grasp, and the light in August's office may not be bright fluorescents, but it's better than the bar, and enough to have him noticing her eyes are a touch red.

She may be wearing a mask of composure, but it's just that – a ruse.

"I'm glad you came this afternoon," she says to him. "I needed someone, and you were there, and I'm so grateful. In fact, you're always there when I need you; it's one of the reasons I want to take the time to try to figure all of this out." Her thumb rubs across his knuckles, and then her hand slips away, her gaze dropping down to his collar as she admits, "But the reason I didn't want to call my therapist this afternoon was that I already had – this morning. I asked for an appointment, so I could talk all of this out before I made a decision."

He watches as one hand needlessly smoothes her skirt over her hips, then fiddles with the purse she still hasn't slipped from her shoulder.

"Seeing as you said yes, I'm assuming the conversation went well?" he ventures.

Regina lets out a dry laugh, and tells him, "Not really, no. I mean, yes, it did – he thinks it's a great idea. That it could be good for me, help me relax and get back to feeling like myself."

Robin takes a moment to feel vindicated – therapist approved, once again.

And then Regina is saying, "Our conversation cleared up a lot for me – but it wasn't all what I'd call 'good.'"

That purse finally slips from her shoulder; she lets it slide down to her hand, and then turns to drop it on August's desk. He's fairly certain she's just stalling for whatever it is she really wants to say to him – it's highly unlikely that her therapist approving of his plan of action is what's gotten her angry at him.

"We talked a lot about us," she continues, "and what's standing in the way of us. And I… had a little revelation." She looks at him again, finally, straight in the face (her own is a little pinched, her eyes unsure, and she lifts a hand to tuck her hair behind her ear as her tongue peeks out to wet her lips), and then she says, "I thought I'd forgiven you for everything that happened between us, but I haven't."

Bollocks.

His lungs deflate as a lance of guilt pierces through him. Robin has to remind himself that she'd said yes to his proposal, so this can't be another round of 'second verse, same as the first' but it still feels like shit to hear her say it.

"I wanted to, I wanted to make this friendship work, for Henry – and for me, so I just shoved it all down, but…" Her arms cross again, her chin jutting up a little as she tells him, "you have no idea how badly you hurt me – _I_ had no idea, until tonight. I didn't want it to hurt the way it did, so I convinced myself it didn't, but I can't do this month of no hard feelings until you understand _why_ it was so hurtful."

He doesn't need an explanation; he knows why. He's never been unclear as to how he hurt her, and he tells her so now.

"Regina, love, it's alright. I know that I broke your trust—"

"No, you don't know," she interrupts, a flash of temper breaking through her nervous shell. "I wish you did – I wish you had. I _told_ you that honesty was important to me, I know that I did. And you lied to me anyway."

Fuck.

"I know," he says carefully, penitently. "And I'm sor—"

"I'm not done talking," she interrupts again, lifting a hand to shut him up, and Robin realizes she's perhaps angrier than even he'd realized. Her breath is quickening, and that energy he thought was nerves isn't nerves at all, but fury, he realizes. She's _pissed_ at him. "I have something I need to say to you, and I need you to let me get it out, and I'm sorry if it's harsh, but if I keep pushing it down—"

It's his turn to interrupt, inviting, "Let me have it, then."

If there's something between them that she needs to burn off, then so be it. Considering what he'd done to her, to her family, the fact that he hasn't seen the inside of the Baltimore PD station this summer means he's gotten off light. He can take a verbal lashing if it'll clear the air between them.

"You should have told me the truth," she insists, her fingers squeezing tight against her bare arms. "Maybe not when we met, and maybe not in the beginning, but when we were sitting at that restaurant and I asked you what was wrong, you should have told me _the truth_. But you didn't. You lied – you lied to my face, and do you have any idea – _any idea! –_ how much I've been lied to by people I'm supposed to be able to trust?"

He is listening to every word she says – he is, truly – but the surge in her temper has her nose scrunching, her eyes flashing, her "any idea!" growled through bared teeth, and he's throttled by the realization that he's far too besotted with her. Because he finds her fury heartbreaking, and sweat-inducing, he feels like utter shit over it – but there's also a moment there, that scrunchy-nosed moment of ire, where she looks a bit like an enraged little chipmunk, and under the slithering guilt in his guts, he can't help thinking _Christ alive, she's cute._

But then her eyes well with angry tears, and the moment pops like a soap bubble.

"My mother lied to me about everything – _everything_. I never knew what to trust, I never knew what was real, or what she just wanted me to think was real. She would lie right to my face about—God, Robin—the color of the sky, if it suited her purposes that day. And now I've come to find out, that she and my father lied to me for _years_ about their marriage, their lives, about _her_." She wipes furious at the tears on her cheeks, but her anger is keeping her voice strong and clear despite them, as she tells him firmly, "I hate liars. And you lied to me."

Fuck.

 _Fuck_.

He starts to apologize again, will apologize until he's blue if he needs to, but she cuts him off again with a vehement, "I'm not finished."

Robin digs his hands deeper into his pockets and nods, presses his lips firmly shut and ducks his head a bit so she can rain down more brutal honesty upon it.

"I knew something wasn't right, and you told me you were afraid you would end up hurting me, but that was bullshit, Robin." He grits his teeth against that one, wants to defend himself, but she needs to get this all out. So he stays silent while she seethes, "You _knew_ you were going to hurt me. You knew by then that you couldn't get away with it, you had to have, and instead of being honest with me, you lied. You hurt me, on purpose—"

"No," he interrupts, because no, he did _not._ "That's not—"

But she'll have none of it, cutting off his defense with a heated, "Yes, you did."

"I didn't mean to hurt you," he insists. "I never meant to."

"Yes, you did," she repeats, brushing away more tears, her voice shaking just a little now. "Maybe you didn't want to, and maybe you didn't like it, but you knew you were going to hurt me, you knew it would hurt even more if we got involved, and you did it anyway. You _chose_ to hurt me; it wasn't an accident, it didn't just happen. You took me out, you took me _home_ , you acted like everything was—" She cuts _herself_ off that time, her jaw working for a second before she finishes, "You could have told me the truth _sooner;_ you could have told me when I asked what was holding you back."

When she puts it like that, there's not much he can say to defend himself other than an utterly inadequate, "I was afraid."

"You were a coward," she bites, and Robin fights the urge to squirm under the weight of his shame. "And you were selfish. And you broke my heart, and you broke my trust, and I'm _not_ over it. I wanted to be, but I'm not."

She's right, he realizes with a dreadful sinking feeling. He _did_ know he was going to hurt her, and he did forge ahead anyway. Too cowardly and too selfish to put her heart before his own. He'd wanted her – had wanted to know her, to be around her, to kiss her, to hold her, to fuck her. He'd wanted what he knew he'd have to blow to pieces eventually, and he chose to have it anyway.

She has every right to be angry.

"And you scare the hell out of me. Because you did the thing I _hate_ , and I still want you. I still let you back in, let you in _even deeper_ , and I am so angry that you earned my trust and then broke it, I hate that you did that. I _hate_ it. I don't want you to think that you can do it again, and just be forgiven like it doesn't—"

"I don't," he assures her, closing the distance between them with a step forward and daring to reach out and touch her. His hands find her biceps gently, his fingers brushing against the ones she has gripped vise-like, as he insists again, "I don't. I'm not going to lie to you again; I hate that I did it, too. I felt like shit about it, the whole time, but I—"

He couldn't stop, is what he wants to say, but somehow he doesn't think that would be terribly reassuring.

He can see the shift of muscle in her jaw as she clenches her teeth, but she doesn't say anything right away.

She sucks in a breath and lets it out heavily, her eyes still bright and angry, her body held tense in his tender grip, and Robin pleads with her, "Please, don't be scared of me, love – or of this. You've _nothing_ to be frightened of—"

She chokes out a scoff and shakes her head, tells him, "Of course I do. You proved you can hurt me, and I'll come back. And I don't want to be hurt again; I am so tired of hurting."

Her eyes have welled up again, twin tears spilling over when she blinks, and his thumb rushes to wipe them away. He brushes the dampness from flushed cheeks, and tries to figure out when they got this close – they're nearly brow-to-brow now, and he can't see any good reason not to let his forehead drop to hers.

He can feel her, the heat of her, the warm wash of her quick breaths, and then the whiskey-sweetened softness of her lips surging in against his.

The kiss is unexpected, but by no means unwelcome – he'd rather be kissing her than listening to her tell him how he ripped open wounds in her that she's spent all summer unable to close. He'll patch it all up with kisses, press them into her mouth, her skin, her heart, cover her in them if it'll help stanch the bleeding.

Robin lets his hands slide down, around, wrapping them around her torso and urging her against him, thrilling at the little moan she lets out, at the way she lifts her own to fist in the sides of his shirt. Her mouth opens eagerly, tongue pushing out against his lips. He lets them part for her, letting loose a moan of his own when one of her hands shoots up to grip his hair and tug his head even closer.

It's messy, sloppy and tongue-filled, and hot, and he can feel her tits pressed against his chest, finds himself with one hand suddenly full of her ass. He grips it and squeezes, and she lets out another little noise that has his cock hardening.

He wants her again. Can still remember the feel of her underneath him, the way she'd sounded when she'd come around his cock, the way her mouth had felt against his neck as he finished. He shouldn't be thinking about that, because he's already well on his way to a stiffy he's going to have to let abate before he can head back to work (and how is he supposed to do that when she's in one of those tight skirts, one of those button-down blouses – a crisp white one that his fingers itch to free button-by-button until he can lick his way down her sternum and—)

Fuck!

Her teeth catch his lower lip – hard. Not a teasing love bite, but a punishing snap of her teeth, catching and then pulling back, and Robin can't help the groan of aroused surprise that slips out of him before she releases it.

His eyes pop open, and he finds hers waiting for him, intense and still angry, and that shouldn't make him hotter, but, Christ, it does. He dives in for another kiss, and the hand in his hair loosens its grip and rakes down the back of his neck, her nails digging in just a tad more than he could consider "lightly", chasing a shiver down his spine. Robin uses his grip on her ass to tug her even closer, his other hand rising to tangle in her hair and urge her head back, intent on sucking kisses down the perfumed stretch of her neck.

But she doesn't let him – shakes off his grip with a breathless, "No," and slides that hand back up into _his_ hair, giving it a yank and diving in to suck hard where his pulse thunders just below his jaw. Robin lets out a deep groan at the combination of the feel and the memory of last night, his hips pushing into her involuntarily.

His groan becomes a _guh…_ when she goes from kissing to more sharp nips down his neck, not quite enough to bruise, but enough to throb deliciously in her wake, and then she hits his collar. Hits the place where his v-neck covers skin and she sinks her teeth in _hard,_ a punishing bite through the cotton that has him hissing and squeezing his hands against her.

She mutters, "Lying asshole," into his skin then licks another kiss just next to his collar, and Robin makes a mental note that a pissed off Regina may not be such a bad thing from time to time.

He groans, "I know; I'm sorry," and claims her mouth again, breaking a moment later to murmur, "Don't take this the wrong way, but you're sexy when you're angry."

Unsurprisingly, she jerks her head back and scowls at him, an unamused, "Seriously?" accompanying a judgy arch of her brows.

"I'm sorry," he grimaces, before trying his best charming smile, both hands cupping the curve of her ass now and kneading it as he murmurs, "But you're hot and passionate, and… I can _feel_ all the pent up tension inside you."

She inhales deeply, pressing tighter against him, her hands delving down into his back pockets, and when she squeezes he can feel the bite of her nails through the denim and groans helplessly.

"I've had a pretty shitty day," she admits, her gaze lingering on his mouth. "And I'm tired, and emotional, and I want what I usually want when I'm having a bad day."

Thank Christ.

His cock twitches at the very suggestion, and he leans in with a little moan, kissing along her jaw and murmuring warmly, "I can make that happen for you…"

"Not here," she breathes, but, oh, yes here. He's hard as nails, and she's had a shitty day, and it's his fault, and he wants to make it up to her.

So he tells her, "August gave me twenty minutes; we've at least ten left. Nobody will know."

She _Oh_ s breathily, more of a sigh than an actual response, and Robin runs his tongue lightly along the edge of her jaw until he can plant a kiss behind it.

She shivers, and he grins, does it again, then coaxes, "Let me make you come, babe. Do you want my fingers?" A gentle bite to her earlobe and he offers, "Want me to eat you out?"

He can get her off here, quick and dirty. Send her home with a smile and a little shot of endorphins to help her relax, help her sleep.

But she shakes her head, then runs her hand down between them and cups his erection, giving it a squeeze and breathing, "I want this."

"Thank fuck," Robin groans into her neck, wasting no time in walking her back toward the edge of August's desk.

Regina gives his arse a squeeze again and protests, "We don't have anything—condoms," and Robin sends up a prayer of thanks for his forethought earlier in the day.

He'd had a bit of time between lunch and work, and he'd been a bit lax in buying things for the house lately, so, "I stopped for loo rolls on the way into work, and grabbed a box of condoms too, just in case you said yes. They're in my locker."

Regina pulls her head back slightly to look at him, her heated gaze flicking between his lips, his eyes, her breath heavy, and then she suggests, "I get the door, you get the condom?"

Robin grins and steals another kiss, this one full of tongue and promise. It breaks with a wet smack, and he lets her go, walking across the room to rifle through the plastic bag at the bottom of his locker as she moves to lock the office door.

He pushes past loo rolls and toothpaste and deodorant until he finds the box buried beneath, ripping open the cardboard and tugging a little foil packet from inside.

When he turns around, she's back where he left her, leaning slightly against the desk, her hands gripping the edge as she watches him. Her skin is pleasantly flushed, her hair a bit tousled, her lips well-kissed, and the pitch of her shoulders makes one of her buttons strain a bit with each eager breath she takes. That black skirt hugs her hips, her thighs; the sight of her makes him ache.

How on earth is he lucky enough to be about to fuck her for the second time in twenty-four hours?

"You look bloody gorgeous," he tells her as he prowls toward her, and she rolls her eyes a little.

"I doubt that," she says, and, "I've seen me today; I look wrecked."

She looks tired, sure, but the weight and shadow of her exhaustion have been lifted by the promise of orgasm on the horizon; her eyes are brighter, her cheeks pinker.

"Not right now, you don't," he assures, pressing her into the edge of the desk and dipping his head down for another kiss.

She humors him for a moment, but only a moment, and then she's pushing at his shoulder, and insisting, "I'm still mad at you," shoving him in the direction of the desk chair.

Robin falls into it with a plunk, reaching for the hem of her skirt and rucking it up as she climbs onto his lap.

"Mm, you wanna be on top?" he assumes as her fingers rake back into his hair again, nails scraping his scalp. She's still all pent up, anger and arousal, and hey, if she wants to work it out on him, well, he's not going to complain.

She nods and kisses him deeply, presses him back flush against the chair as he shoves that skirt up over her ass (her delightfully bare ass, God, thank Christ, she's incredible), fingertips stealing beneath the soft material of her thong to find her already warm and slippery for him.

He groans and strokes down to her clit, making her gasp softly into his mouth, and then he rubs back the way he came and sinks a finger into her. The angle is a little awkward, but she moans anyway, sitting up. She sinks deeper onto his finger and he pulls back, adds a second and works her slowly while she reaches between them and undoes his belt, tugs roughly at his button and yanks down his fly.

She pushes at the waist of his jeans, his shorts, and Robin tries to lift to help her, but it's awkward, she grimaces.

"This is a little… tight," she gripes, and it is, really, her trying to plant her knees on either side of him, squeezed into the chair like they are.

So he decides, "Floor," and loops an arm around her waist, using it to hold her steady as he pitches them forward and sinks to his knees, settling her on the ground beneath him. (Thank God August keeps a clean house.)

She's twisting beneath him immediately, flipping them until he's on his back on the carpet and she's straddled above him. Robin groans at the sight of her (will he ever tire of this, he wonders? Or has the starvation of weeks of nothing but imagining this and fearing it would never happen be enough to make him this desperately appreciative for the rest of his bloody life?), and this time when she sits back a little and yanks his pants down, he can lift until she's rucked it all down to mid-thigh and his cock springs free.

Her hand wraps around it, gives him a slow stroke, and then she's twisting around, asking, "Where's the…?"

"On the desk," he answers, hands sliding up beneath her skirt again, pushing it up around her waist, drawing her thong down as she stretches to grope for the condom. Regina lets out a noise of irritation when he hits a point where he can't tug it any lower, and she shifts off of him long enough to let him draw the little scrap of fabric down and off.

Robin shoves it down into his pocket for safekeeping as she kneels above him again and rips the condom open. She doesn't seem to need (or want) his assistance at the moment, so he finds her clit with his thumb, rubbing over it in a way that makes her lashes flutter and her tongue swipe across her lip. But she stays focused on him, rolls the condom down over his length and then scoots forward and lines him up with her.

He wasn't expecting it so soon, starts to ask, "Do you need more—" but apparently she _doesn't_ , because she's already sinking down, taking in the first inch of him with a gasping moan, her jaw dropping open as her eyes fall shut. She's _tight_ , wet enough but just barely, and he groans at the snug heat of her as she sinks down a little lower, then rises up, down again, taking a little more, and then up a bit, working herself down onto him with these painfully sexy, velvety sighs of pleasure.

The condom is better than last night, thinner, better-fitting – _his_ brand rather than hers – so he can feel her more fully, can feel her heat, her everything, and he has to fight to keep his eyes open, has to fight not to buck up into her and feel her snug all around him immediately.

But they'd rather skipped the foreplay, so he swallows thickly, murmurs, "God, babe, you feel so good," and keeps circling his thumb against her clit.

She looks amazing, incredible, looks like his cock is _just_ what she needed as she takes more and more of it, finally taking him to the hilt and then rocking slightly to work him impossibly deeper. Her lashes flutter open, and the look she gives him is all sex, her torso tilting forward until he has to pull his hand from between them, her palms landing on the floor on either side of his head.

She bends her head to kiss him, and Robin reaches blindly for those teasing buttons on the front of her shirt, freeing the first several and slipping his hands beneath the cotton of her blouse to cup and squeeze her tits. She moans, and rocks on top of him, working her hips over his cock as their tongues fight for dominance, and he's only just snuck beneath the lace of her bra to give her nipple a hard squeeze when she truly takes control.

She reaches for one of his wrists, yanking it away from her and pinning it to the floor near his head, and then a second later she does the same with the other, her gaze possessive and predatory, her nails sinking sharply against his wrists.

Robin groans and lets himself be taken, lets his eyes drop shut finally as she picks up the pace.

But she gasps, "Look at me," almost immediately, and he's forcing them back open, watching her face as she rides him, blue eyes locked on dark as she orders him breathlessly, "Don't you ever, _ever_ lie to me again."

"I won't," he moans, and she digs her nails in harder, tells him to promise her, and he does, murmuring, "Fuck, love, I promise. Christ, you feel…"

A little shift and she cries out on the next thrust down, riding him harder, harder, faster, chasing her pleasure in a way that he can't possibly look away from now. She's hot and wet and tighter and tighter around him, gasping, crying out, fuck, she's so – God, she's—

"Robin!" she gasps, and then she moans, deep and open and, fuck, she's sexy, but they're fucking in the back office, so she should probably be quiet.

He watches her jaw drop, her lashes flutter, her back arch a little, and he urges her, "Don't scream, love, don't scream" – the bloody opposite of what he wants as pleasure churns in his gut, his balls tightening. "Fuck, God, _Regina!_ "

"If you come before me, I swear to – _oh! –_ God," she warns, and Robin shuts his eyes, shakes his head, shifts a little so he can plant his feet and thrust up into her on each push down.

She gasps, a sudden, sharp, loud thing, and he opens his eyes again to make sure it's pleasure on her face and not pain. It is, God, it is, she looks blissed out and lovely, gripping his wrists harder, his hands are starting to tingle as their hips smack together again, again, she's so bloody hot, tight, lovely, fuck, don't come, don't come…

He should stop watching her but he can't, can't stop when she's mouthing _Don't stop, don't…_ and taking him harder, harder, his wrists suddenly free as she blindly shoves his hand down toward where they're joined.

Robin gets the hint and presses his thumb hard to her clit, earning a half-delirious moan as her face scrunches up, her cunt growing snugger, hotter, and she gasps, "Don't st—! Oh, I—!"

One of her hands pushes at the hem of his shirt, and then he feels the painful heat of her nails raking a line from his ribs, over his abs, and he lets out a hissed, "Shit, babe, ah!" as she moans _Ungh, God!_ and then pitches forward and crushes her mouth to his, coming with a heady moan that vibrates against his lips.

Robin kisses and kisses her, his groans and her cries reverberating between their mouths, his thumb wedged between them as her hips stutter in their rhythm, a sudden staccato as orgasm rocks through her.

They can't have that, he thinks – one of his last coherent thoughts before he grasps her hips in his hands and fucks up harder, faster, quicker from beneath. She groans harshly and drops her head into his neck, moans something he thinks (hopes) is, "Ohgodyesfuckme," and then he's too far gone to pay much attention.

His balls tighten, pleasure coiling low in his gut, winding, winding, and then springing free with an ecstatic snap as he moans and spills himself into her, thrusting up deeply again, again, once more, and then they both go boneless.

Their chests heave, pressing, rising, falling, her breath panting against his neck, his ruffling her hair, before he presses a kiss to her heated brow.

She lets out a breathless, awed, "Fuck…"

And all Robin can think to respond with is an equally fuckstruck. "Yeah."

That was… Wow...

Regina lets out a distressed little moan and presses her face into his neck, and he's readying himself to tell her she can't feel guilty about this, convinced she's going to regret it, but all she says is a baffled, "Did we just have sex in August's _office_?"

Robin lifts his head up and cranes his neck a bit to grin down at her.

"We did and it was fantastic."

She bites her lip and smiles guiltily, then makes Robin snort a laugh as she sighs, "I think I need to leave him another 20."

He drops his head back to the floor, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and giving her a little squeeze, another kiss to the forehead.

She lets loose a contented little sigh and Robin's heart flutters pathetically, his unbridled affection for her urging him to ask, "What can I do to make this right?"

He'll do whatever it takes to fix the rift he'd carved between them with his secrets. Whatever penance she assigns him, he'll perform it if it'll put this all behind them.

It breaks his heart when she tells him defeatedly, "Nothing." But then she's rubbing a hand over his chest and assuring, "You've already done it."

"I have?" he questions, tilting his head down to look at her as best he can.

She nods, and rubs her palm soothingly over the fading red welts her nails left across his ribs.

"Rebuilding trust takes time, and you've done the time," she tells him. "You've been here for me, for Henry, you've proven that I can trust you. You don't need to do anything else."

She shifts then, tries to lever up onto her elbow, but he's still inside her, growing softer by the minute. He starts to slip out when she adjusts, and reaches a hand down to grip the condom firmly to keep it from leaking as she moves herself off of him with a little grunt.

Regina stretches herself along his side and scoots up until she can plant that elbow over his shoulder after all, pinning his right arm and keeping him trapped with his left holding the spent condom on his cock.

Well, alright then. No rush. (There is, a bit, they're probably pushing those twenty minutes, but oh well. Worth it.)

She's still mid-thought, apparently, and he'll keep for a minute, so he turns his head toward her and lets her finish with his full attention.

"I just needed to get it all out," she tells him softly, "and I need to let myself be mad for a day or two – I need to _feel_ this instead of bottling it up. And then I need to let it go." She flattens her hand over his heart and says, "But I needed you to understand. I needed you to know _why_ it hurt me so much."

"I really am sorry," he assures, and she shakes her head with a little smile, that hand on his chest sliding up to cup his jaw.

"I know," she tells him, her nails scratching lightly over his beard. "And I want to put it in the past – I do. I will. But before I do… I need you to make me a promise."

"Anything," he agrees without a moment's hesitation.

He has an idea of what it will be, anyway, and she doesn't disappoint, asking of him, "Never lie to me again. Not like that, not when I already know something is wrong." She licks her lips, and shakes her head and tells him, "I don't know where we'll be a month from now, but I know we won't be anywhere if I have to worry you're going to lie to me; I have to be able to trust you."

Robin decides the condom will keep for a moment, and lifts the hand she doesn't have pinned until he can tangled it in her hair, his thumb rubbing her cheek before he looks her in the eyes, and swears, "I won't. I promise. No more secrets, no more lies. Believe me, if we can survive _that_ lie, there's nothing else worth keeping from you."

The smile she gives him is warm, but sleepy, and underscored with a bit of the hurt feelings she's said she needs to finish working through. And then it breaks, splits open into a wide yawn that has him suppressing a smile.

His pinned hand rubs at the nearest bit of her back it can reach, and he urges, "Why don't we get you home, hmm? This condom is starting to get a little crispy anyway."

She startles a little at that, says, "Oh!" in a way that makes it clear she'd forgotten entirely about it, and then she sits with a slightly sheepish smile and starts fixing her tits in her bra and buttoning her top.

Robin eases off the condom and stands as gracefully as one can with his trousers slumped halfway down his thighs. He uses one hand to hike them up, the other still gripping the condom, and then he reaches for a couple of tissues from August's desk and balls it up in there.

"Sorry, mate," mutters, tossing the little bundle into the trash, and feeling very glad that it's a half-full bin and perhaps it'll go unnoticed. (He does pocket the wrapper, though, righting his pants properly and then bending to pick it up off the floor where she'd left it.)

Regina groans and mutters, "I can't believe we did this _here_."

"No guilt," he reminds, giving his rumpled shirt a tug as she pushes to her feet (God, she's still wearing her heels – he really should have taken the proper time to appreciate _that_ when they were fucking).

"I don't feel guilty about having sex with you," she tells him, straightening her skirt primly. "I feel guilty about doing it in the middle of a busy shift, and in your _boss's office_. And that" —she points at him smugly— "does not violate our agreement."

Robin just smiles at her and says, "If it makes you feel any better, I know that August _and_ Ruby have both had sex in this office."

Regina's brows slip up and she asks, "What is this? The romper room?"

"It's the room with the door that locks, and we work around a lot of booze," he shrugs. "Apparently things happen."

"Apparently," she mutters, and he's tempted to make a crack about glass houses and throwing stones and all that, but before he gets a chance she's holding out a beckoning hand and requesting, "My underwear, please."

Robin feigns innocence, tilting his head, letting his brow wrinkle into a questioning furrow. "Underwear?"

One of her brows arches regally, and she reminds, "You just promised not to lie to me."

Robin's pout deepens, and he reaches out to pull her in close, grousing, "I can't even tease you?"

Those dark eyes roll skyward, but she appears to let his little fib go, simply requesting again, "Give me my underwear, please."

Robin rocks her a bit in his arms, quite enjoying getting to finally have a playful sort of afterglow with her. Finally. But he doesn't give in, instead he tries to bargain, "How about we consider them a trade for my Arsenal hoodie?"

Regina scowls and points out, "You told me to hold onto that. And what are you going to do with my dirty panties anyway?"

He hadn't really thought that far, to be honest. He just rather enjoyed the idea of her going home without them, and him feeling them wedged into his pocket all night and knowing exactly why.

He makes a show of mulling it over, finally coming up with, "Mm… Sleep with them under my pillow and hope the orgasm fairy pays a visit."

Regina snorts, a smile lighting up her face, but it doesn't keep her from insisting, "Gimme. Now. I can't go home to my son without my underwear."

"You are absolutely no fun," he pouts, drawing the bit of lace and cotton from his pocket. "He'd never know."

"I would," she insists, nicking them from his fingers – but he's still got his arms locked around her waist so she's stuck just holding onto them until he lets her go. Something he doesn't have a mind to do quite yet.

"Mm, yes you would," Robin agrees, leaning in and pressing a kiss just below her ear. "And you'd know just where they were. With me. For safekeeping."

"Oh, safekeeping, hmm?" She tries to taunt him with it, but it doesn't escape him that her tone is suddenly a bit breathless.

"Mmhmm," he insists, letting his nose drag lightly down the side of her neck until she shivers, and then tracing kisses back up as he murmurs, "This was… hands down… one of the hottest sexual experiences… of my life. I'd like a little souvenir."

Her breath has gone thick and deep, her neck flecked with goosebumps, and it thrills him that he can draw such a reaction out of her. Thrills him even more when she tips her head back so she can ask, "It was?"

"Easily top five," he tells her, giving her a little squeeze and praising, "You were glorious. And you have no idea how long I've wanted to fuck you in one of these skirts. Preferably bent over a desk, but the floor was nice too."

She rolls her eyes at him again, but she's smirking, can't quite suppress her smug amusement. And then, God bless her, he feels her hand delve into his pocket, tucking her thong back where it came from.

It should embarrass him, the way he feels his face light up at the little revelation, but it doesn't. He just grins at her and asks, "Really?"

Regina shrugs her shoulders and says, "We'll blame the delirious exhaustion for my poor decision-making – but I swear to God, Robin, if _anyone_ ever finds them, I will—"

"I will guard your knickers with my life," he assures, popping a smooch onto her lips just before the rapid triple bang of a fist sounds from the door.

Regina startles and jumps back from him, putting a good six inches of space between them as August calls through the door, "While I am sympathetic to you guys having some shit to work through – and believe me, I hope you do, because I like you both and you need to get your heads out of your asses and just admit you're crazy about each other already – I really need my bartender back. It's been half an hour."

"I'll be right out!" Robin calls back, as Regina buries her face in her hands and shakes her head back and forth.

"I guess that's our cue," Robin tells her, wincing.

Regina wipes her hands down her face, her cheeks noticeably pinker when they reappear, and declares, "I'm going to have to find a new place to get a burger, because I certainly can't set foot in _here_ again."

Robin chuckles, assuring her, "It's fine. He probably just thinks we're talking – that's what I told him we'd be doing."

"Considering how he found us the last time…" Regina reminds, reaching for her purse and slipping it up onto her shoulder. "I very much doubt that. I need to get home, anyway. I have to order something for Henry for dinner, and then I need to sleep."

She's starting to look tired again, the post-coital glow giving way to the heady tiredness she'd been carrying when she walked it. He wishes he could do more to ease it, could do anything, really.

"You want me to have Neal make you a couple of burgers?" he offers. It's not much, but it's one less thing she needs to worry about.

She softens a little at that, and says, "Actually, yes. That'd be great. But _a_ burger – cheeseburger and waffle fries for Henry. I'll, um… " She shrugs a little and admits, "I'm not very hungry. Too exhausted to be hungry."

Robin's not sure he's ever heard of such a thing, and besides, it's a man's prerogative to take care of the woman he is sort-of seeing, so he suggests, "How about some chicken and veg? It'll keep if you don't eat it all." Her lips start to pinch into a frown and he worries she'll feel judged like she had this afternoon, so he goes quickly for the joke with, "You did just work up a bit of an appetite, after all. Have to keep your strength up if you're going to make a habit of riding men into their wildest dreams."

It works; that scowl tips up at the corners, and she concedes, "Fine. But I may need to hide in my car until they're done, lest I have to look August in the eye for more than a passing glance."

She has nothing to be embarrassed about (alright, maybe she _does_ …), but he takes pity on her anyway, urging, "Why don't you head home. I'll put it in for delivery and make sure you're at the top of the queue. You can go, change into something more comfortable, get ready for a nice, long medicated nap…"

"Mm," she hums appreciatively. "That sounds nice."

Dinner sorted, he waits and watches as she actually does pull a twenty dollar bill from her purse and then nabs a Post-It and pen from August's desk, scribbling something onto the little yellow square before she sticks it to the bill and props it on August's keyboard.

And then he kisses her warmly one last time, and leads her back into the bar.

When he asks Neal to put a rush on her burger and chicken, he just laughs and mutters something about Robin being whipped. But they're the third order up, nonetheless.


	41. Chapter 41

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in updating this story. As you may know if you follow me on twitter or tumblr, I was hit by a car in July, and was out of commission for about a month.

Robin texts her on Friday around noon, when he finally wakes up: _Hope you got some sleep last night. Dreamt of you all morning._

She answers a few minutes later, telling him, _I did. Thanks._

Robin frowns. That was a bit… short, particularly for someone who'd had him balls deep inside her last night. Then he remembers just _why_ , and that she’d said she needed a few days to work off her anger, so he texts: _Still pissed?_

_Mmhmm. It’ll pass._

He sighs, and tells her, _I’ll leave you to your work then. Call if you need anything_.

He considers it a small consolation that she replies at all, even more so that she tells him, _Thanks, I will. And thanks for last night._

So not all bad, then, he deduces with a little smile, unable to resist the urge to text back: _Your knickers were thanks enough luv_ , with a devilish little emoji as punctuation.

Speaking of… He rolls over, fishing her thong from the pocket of the jeans he’d left crumpled on the floor when he’d fallen into bed early this morning, then flops back onto his mattress with a sigh just as his phone buzzes again.

It’s another text from her, three words that make him laugh out loud: _With. Your. Life._  


_On my honor, I swear to protect them_ , he shoots back and then he tosses the phone aside, and lifts the little scrap of fabric. He hooks a fingertip in either side of the waistband and holds them up, finally getting a good look  – he hadn’t really had much of a chance last night, now, had he?

It’s just a small triangle of pale grey, not cotton, something softer than that, with lavender lace along the waistband. Her bra had been lavender, too, come to think of it – quite possibly this exact lavender, and lacy, just like this. It occurs to him then it was probably a set, and no wonder she hadn’t been keen on parting with them.

 _Alas, too late now_ , he thinks with a smirk and very little remorse.

She has such a bloody tiny waist, he muses, giving the lace a little stretch and turning her knickers around to appreciate the back side – or lack thereof. God, she must have looked bloody incredible in this; he almost regrets not taking her skirt off altogether so he could enjoy the view.

Almost.

  
Not quite.

The view had been pretty spectacular as it was. Really, incredibly fantastic.

He’s just settling in to enjoy the memory of it, of her on top of him, all wild and fierce (and yes, angry, but it appears it’s an anger that will blow over, so he’s willing to overlook that for now), just starting to mull over the lovely details, and feeling his cock start to stir when he hears the pounding scamper of feet up the stairs, and a voice calling his name – “Robin?”

His heart lurches when he realizes it’s _Henry_ , and he has just enough time to shove the boy’s mother’s knickers (Christ, she’d absolutely _murder him_ ) under his pillows before his door swings open, and Tuck comes bounding in, Henry behind him.

Nothing has ever killed a boner faster. Thank God he’d still had his shorts on.

Henry skids to a stop and scowls at the sight of Robin still in bed, asking, “Why aren’t you up yet? It’s lunchtime.”

“For you, maybe,” Robin tells him, sitting up and hoping he doesn’t look nearly as panic-stricken as he feels. “Some of us work late and sleep late.”

“Oh,” Henry remembers, with a look of regret. “Did I wake you up?”

“No, I was awake,” Robin assures him, swinging his legs off to the side and pulling on those same jeans, because, well, they’re there, and they’re clean enough.

He spies the open condom wrapper on the floor where it must have slipped free of his pocket at some point, and sends up another prayer of thanks, this time for the fact that Henry is on the _other_ side of the bed.

“What did you want?” he asks, as he toes it surreptitiously under the bed and fully out of sight.

“I was bored,” Henry shrugs. “I thought maybe you could show me some new stuff on the guitar. Or we could go to the park or something.”

One of those sounds like it takes a bit too much brainpower for his newly awakened self, the other a bit too much energy. So Robin suggests instead, “How about we start with some lunch?”

  


**.::.**

  


The flaw in this whole lunch plan becomes apparent as soon as they get to the kitchen. He and John are, to put it plainly, shit at keeping a full fridge. With John away so often for work, and Robin eating half his weekly dinners at the bar, they don’t _need_ to keep a whole lot of food in the house – not proper food anyway.

And he’d meant to do some shopping today on his day off – refresh their stores of white bread and cold cuts and cheese. Pick up some proper fruit and veg for the weekend with Roland, and restock his supply of mac and cheese, maybe get some hot dogs to throw in, or one of those ready-made rotisserie chickens.

But as he’s just rolled out of bed, he hasn’t exactly had a chance to do that yet, so they’re left to fend for themselves with what they’ve got: a tomato that’s starting to wrinkle a bit, some eggs, a carton of milk he pulls out and takes a whiff of – a move he regrets with a wince, setting it back on the shelf with a stern reminder to himself to dump the little that’s left down the drain later – Some three-day-old take-out pork lo mein, and a lime.

Well, then.

Robin zeroes in on the eggs, suggesting, “How about some fried egg sandwiches?”

He has enough bread, and there’s a half-spent jar of ketchup in the fridge door. It’ll do for lunch.

And Henry is game, tells him, “Sure,” with an agreeable shrug, so Robin reaches in and pops open the carton to find one lonely egg resting inside.

Right.

He looks at Henry and asks, “I don’t suppose your mum has eggs?”

She does – of course she does – so they head next door, dog in tow, and take advantage of Regina’s decidedly fuller fridge.

She’s down to the last egg in the carton as well – but there’s another full dozen resting underneath it. The ketchup he pulls from the door is organic, the bread they find in the breadbox is a hearty seven-grain – not ideal if you ask him (there’s something nice about the bland, pillowy softness of WonderBread when it comes to an egg sandwich) but it’ll do.

She’s also got a crisper full of apples, a half-full carton of raspberries, two cartons of milk (a quart of skim that he imagines is hers, and a half gallon of 2% for Henry), a small pyramid of yogurts, some fresh-from-the-deli shaved turkey, and a packet of pork chops. There’s one of the plastic cartons of ready-made mixed greens for salads, a carton of cherry tomatoes, and a cucumber.

It’s a well-stocked pinnacle of health that puts his paltry bachelor pad selection to shame, and he’s half-tempted to beg her guidance for his own shopping. But then, half of it would probably just go bad on the shelf, and that’d be a waste, wouldn’t it?

And it’s neither here nor there at the moment, so he puts the thought aside, and gets to making their eggs.

Henry watches, and helps, pulling out four slices of bread at Robin’s urging, and cutting up a couple of apples for them with this corer-slicer thing that is handy enough Robin makes a mental note to look into getting one himself for Roland’s snacktime.

Before too long they’re settled at the table, munching away at their sandwiches and apple pieces, Robin occasionally tossing Tuck bits of that turkey from the fridge (he and Henry have sworn a pact of secrecy about feeding table scraps to the dog).

Two bites in, Henry declares, “This is really good,” and Robin discovers the boy has never had a fried egg sandwich before in his life.

“You’re joking,” he tells him, and then he decides, “No, you're probably not, are you? Now I regret making it with fancy bread – you should have had a proper one.”

“Mom says that white bread is a waste of calories, unless it’s homemade or from France,” Henry tells him, and Robin snorts a little laugh.

“That sounds like something your mum would say,” he chuckles, adding, “I bet she’d have a stroke if she saw my fridge.”

“Probably,” Henry shrugs, munching away. “Why don’t you buy better food? Or more food.”

Robin smirks and tells him, “To be honest, I’m rather a lazy git, or at least – when it comes to food only I’m going to eat, I don’t care as much. I was going to go shopping today – for Roland. But during the week, I don’t really cook all that much, so I don’t need a lot of food.”

“If you don’t need very much, then you should buy better stuff than just eggs and beer,” Henry tells him, and Robin snorts.

Touché.

“Maybe I’ll ask your mum for some pointers,” Robin tells him, taking a bite of his sandwich after he adds, “She seems to have things pretty put together.”

Henry answers, “Yeah,” but then he’s frowning into his plate a bit, something clearly on his mind.

The boy’s never had trouble speaking his mind, though, so Robin waits him out, lets him gather his thoughts. After a few seconds, Henry says, “I’m worried about her.”

“Your mum?”  


“Yeah,” he confirms. “She hasn’t been, y’know… _Mom_ the last few days? We had a bad weekend, and then she had that headache, and she still looks kinda sick. And last night, she went to bed before I even did.”

“She’s having a hard week,” Robin tells him, adding, “She’ll be alright, though; she’s tough,” before taking another bite of his sandwich.

Henry just frowns at him, and then asks, “How would you know? You were here for like five minutes on Tuesday.”

Robin freezes mid-chew.

Right.

All their other visits were a bit more… nocturnal. Henry has no idea – nor should he – that he’s seen Regina nearly every day this week.

He half-finishes chewing, then swallows heavily, and tells the boy, “We text sometimes.”

“You do?”

“Mmhmm,” Robin confirms. “About you, most of the time – if she needs me to take you for a bit, or has a question about your lessons, or whatever. But sometimes just about… life. How our days are going, what’s on our minds. Stuff like that.”

Henry lets out a surprised little _Huh_ , and takes a bite of his own sandwich.

He seems to leave it at that, so Robin counts his blessings, and takes another bite of his own – and then nearly chokes a bit when Henry asks, “Are you my mom’s best friend?”

Robin reaches for a swig of his seltzer and gulps it down to clear his throat, then says, “I think if you asked your mum, she’d say that was you.”

Henry smirks and tells him, “Yeah, but she’d be lying. She’s not my friend, she’s my mom. But you guys are friends, right?”

He thinks of Regina, of the way she’d wept on his shoulder the other night, the edgy vulnerability of her across a lunch table yesterday, thinks of the way her nails had scored his ribs before she came last night, and the low, gasping moans she’d let out the first time he was inside her, and he lies through his teeth and says, “Yeah, we’re friends.”

“And she trusts you, right?”

This one might be a lie too, but she’d said she does, right? Despite her best intentions and her need for a bit of space?

So he tells Henry, “Yes.”

“And you babysit me more than anyone else except Mary Margaret, and even she hasn’t been around that much lately. Mom usually calls you.”

“I live down the block,” Robin points out. “I’m easy to call.”

“So’s Granny,” Henry counters smugly.

“She is,” Robin agrees. “But you like hanging out with me, and I like hanging out with you, and your mum thinks it’s good for you to have a man in your life. Someone you can talk to, and do guy stuff with, and all that.”

That’s news to him, it seems. His brow wrinkles, his nose scrunching in a way he definitely inherited from Regina when he asks, “She does?”

“Mmhmm,” Robin tells him. “Honestly, if it weren’t for you, we might not still be friends. We had a bit of a falling out, as you know. But she knew your lessons were important to you, and it was important to _her_ that I be in your life. So I was never really out of hers, you know?” Henry nods. “And so we had to get past what happened, and now we’re friends again.”

“Good,” Henry says resolutely, and Robin chuckles. The boy seems to have given up, somewhat, on making a love connection between the two of them (oh, how little he knows), but it doesn’t surprise Robin in the slightest that he’s satisfied to be the reason they’re at least friends.

And then Henry asks, “Are you ever gonna tell me what you did?” and Robin smirks.

“Sure,” he shrugs, and Henry sits a little straighter, his eyes lighting up.

“Really?”

Robin nods, and tells him, “Absolutely. When you’re eighteen.”

“Aw, come on,” Henry moans, slumping in exasperation familiar enough to have Robin chuckling. Robin takes another bite of his sandwich as Henry sighs, “Why not?”

“Because I think you may be onto something, Henry,” Robin tells him sagely (although admittedly around a mouthful of egg and bread). “I might be your mum’s best friend. And I know that she wouldn’t be happy if I dragged you into all that, especially now that it’s all behind us.”

Nearly so, anyway.

“Fine,” Henry grouses, working up a good sulk again – but he doesn’t quite sell it. His gaze flicks to Robin, like he’s checking, like he’s trying to see if this little show of disappointment is getting to him.

Robin doesn’t bite, just keeps eating his sandwich, nabbing a few apple slices and munching those, too.

After a minute, Henry speaks up again, saying, “I think we should do something for her.”

“For your mum?” Robin asks around a mouthful of egg, before washing it down with a gulp of seltzer.

“Yeah,” Henry nods, reaching for a piece of apple himself. He chews it contemplatively after Robin asks what it is he has in mind, and then he finally decides, “Maybe we could clean up? Do some stuff around the house? That way she doesn’t have to do it all tomorrow, she can just sleep in and relax.”

Robin wonders if Regina has ever slept in a day in her life; he’s always figured her an early riser. But there’s no doubt she’s hurting for sleep, and doing a bit of the housework would certainly take a load off her, so Robin nods and tells Henry, “I think that’s a great idea. What do you think needs cleaning? You probably have a chore list, knowing your mum?”

“Uh huh,” Henry confirms. “I’m supposed to clean up my room, and bring my sheets and hamper down so she can do laundry. And then I have to sweep the kitchen, and wash all the countertops there and in the bathroom,” he finishes with a grumpy grimace.

“All of them?” Robin questions, brows rising.

“Yeah, Mom does the gross stuff like the toilet and the oven, but I have to wipe down the bathroom and kitchen counters with the Lysol wipes.”

Well, that doesn’t sound so bad after all. Robin would gladly wipe down three sets of countertops if it got him out of scrubbing a grimy toilet or greasy stove.

“I think we can get all of that done. We’ll start with the laundry, and then get started on the rest,” he tells Henry, reaching for his seltzer again to down the last of it, and assuring, “I’ll even do all the gross Mom jobs.”

“You’re gonna do the laundry?” Henry questions with a raise of his brows.

“Why not?”

“Laundry’s complicated,” he says. “Mom only lets me help with certain loads, and even then she stands and watches while I get it all ready.”

Robin snorts. “It’s not _that_ complicated. I wash my own clothes all the time, you know.”

Henry's not looking much more confident, but he does concede, “I guess that’s true.”

  
Robin chooses not to be insulted by how unconvinced the boy is, reaching for another slice of apple as he confirms, “So, clean kitchen, clean bathrooms, clean laundry. That sounds like a nice gift for your mum; I think she’ll really appreciate it.”

“Maybe we could make dinner too?” Henry suggest, because why not go all out, right? “So it’s all ready when she gets home?”

“Sure, I think we can manage that without burning the place down,” Robin agrees. “What’d you have in mind?”

He’s figuring something simple, like burgers, or chicken and veg, so his brows shoot up a bit when Henry suggests, “Lasagna? It’s one of her favorites.”

One of Henry’s favorites, Robin knows, and he smirks, and tells him, “I’ve never made a lasagna before, and certainly not one as good as your mum’s.”

“Mom has the recipe,” Henry assures. “She has two – one for when there’s lots of time, and one for when she comes home from work and just wants to make it fast. We can do the fast one, it’s easier. We just have to get all the ingredients and stuff. I’ve helped her lots of times, it’s not that hard.”

Robin is not at all confident in his ability to make a pan of the cheesy, gooey stuff – at least not up to Regina’s usual standard – but if there’s an “easy” version, he’s more than willing to give it a go.

So he tells Henry, “Alright then, lasagna it is,” before pointing at the boy’s plate and urging, “We should finish up eating, if we’re going to get that washing done for your mum, and get the shopping, and cooking, _and_ cleaning done all before she gets home.”

Henry smirks, taunting, “You better not shrink anything. Mom’ll kill you,” and then shoving the rest of his sandwich rather ungracefully into his mouth.

Robin pops away his last bite of apple, chewing it as he says, “I can manage a load of washing, Henry. I promise.”

  


**.::.**

  


An hour later, he’s eating his words.

They’ve started the laundry, and cleaned the loos, and are all set to swap out their first load of clothes for their second, except there’s one small problem.

“Why are all the socks blue?” Henry asks, and, well, isn’t that the question?

Robin pulls pale blue sock after pale blue sock from the load, muttering a curse when one of Regina’s little tank tops comes out streaked with blue, too.

“I’ve no bloody idea,” he mutters, and then he pulls out the denim, and it dawns on him.

There are several pairs of jeans in there that are clearly Henry’s and two of Regina’s, one of which is dark blue. _Very_ dark blue.

“Scratch that, I do have an idea,” he grumbles, holding them up in his fist and looking at Henry. “I think Mum’s jeans betrayed us. The dye bled.”

“Good thing it was just underwear and socks and stuff,” Henry says.

“Yeah, good thing,” Robin agrees, muttering, “At least I didn’t turn it all bloody pink,” before he tosses the jeans into the dryer with the sky-blue socks and skivvies, and prepares his apologies for Regina.

Maybe she likes blue…

He’s more careful loading the next batch of clothes – a mix of hers and Henry’s, but all lighter colors this time. He pulls out a royal blue button-down shirt for fear of the color running, and a red t-shirt of Henry’s even though he knows he’s seen the boy in it a half dozen times and it’s probably perfectly safe to run in a wash. Still, he’d rather not take his chances on throwing it in with the pastels.

He’s pouring in the detergent that Henry’s measured out carefully for him when the boy says, “Maybe we should wash them on cold.”

“Cold?” Robin questions. How’s anything supposed to get clean on cold?

“Uh huh,” he says. “Mom always washes colored stuff on cold; she says it keeps the colors from bleeding.”

Henry glances pointedly over at the tumbling jeans and Robin mutters, “Now you tell me…” and cranks the knob on the washer to cold.

Henry just shrugs and says, “You said you knew how.”

  
That he did. And seeing as he’s a grown man, Robin had believed that to be _true._

  


**.::.**

  


The next round comes out in all the right colors (thank God), and they pull all the sky blue whites from the dryer, move over the colors and fill the washer with sheets.

And then Robin checks the time, and winces.

“Come on, let’s go pick up some groceries for dinner.”

Henry scowls at the washing machine and tells him, “Mom says never to leave laundry unattended.”

Oh, for Christ’s sake. He loves her to death, but only Regina could make laundry into this much of an anxious production.

Robin looks at the boy and tells him very plainly, “Your mum is fussy.”

But Henry is insistent: “She says things get wrinkled if you don’t take them out and fold them right away when they’re fresh.”

“Maybe she’s just trying to get you to do your chores in a timely fashion, hmm? Keep you from arsing around when she asks you to do the folding,”  Robin challenges, and the boy’s jaw drops open slightly like he’s just had a light bulb go on over his noggin. Robin lifts his brows in confirmation, nods a little, and says, “We’ll tumble them again for a few minutes when we get back; it’ll sort the wrinkles out.  But if we’re making her dinner, we don’t have time to run another whole load _and_ get the groceries.”

The prospect of having dinner ready and waiting for Regina when she gets home is finally enough to conquer the lingering laundry doubts, and so they head off to the grocery store with a snapshot of a recipe from the book tucked neatly amongst its fellows on one shelf of the pantry, and a picture of the list on the front of the fridge labeled GROCERIES.

If they come home with an additional two boxes of cookies, a half-gallon of ice cream, and three bags’ worth of staples for Robin’s place (Henry insists on helping him with his selections, insists on fruit for each snack, on two cartons of eggs instead of one “Like Mom does, so we don’t run out”), well, is it really any surprise?

  


**.::.**

  


Regina is to be home at half seven – had texted Henry to apologize profusely that she was going to be a little bit late tonight, that she’d gotten hung up at work, but shouldn’t be any later than that, and if she is, he can go to Robin’s for dinner, or Granny’s, or order himself a pizza with the money in the kitchen drawer. But she’ll be there, she promises.

Henry and Robin are glad for the little reprieve, a bit behind in their dinner prep as they are.

Even so, the rattle of Regina’s keys in the back door and her seeking, “Henry?” don’t come until nearly eight o’clock.

They’re more than ready for her now, table already set, lasagna keeping warm in the oven.

“In here, Mom!” Henry calls back, gesturing Robin wildly toward the bottle of red wine breathing on the countertop.

She’s apologizing when she rounds the corner, looking worn out and clutching a vase of purple tulips – and then she freezes, tilting her head slightly as her eyes widen and go a bit guarded.

“What’s all this?” she asks as she moves again, settling the tulips on the countertop and taking the glass of wine that Robin holds out for her. He smiles warmly at her as he does, and tells himself not to think about who exactly is giving her flowers (to be honest, he can guess, and he dislikes it immensely).

Regina’s lips curve in response, but the smile doesn’t quite meet her eyes. Right. He’s still a bit in the doghouse, isn’t he?

Henry pulls her attention away, explaining, “It’s Mom’s Day! Like Mother’s Day, except in August, and without Grandma.”

Robin watches that half-hearted smile become an amused smirk, a little chuckle falling from her as she lifts her wine to her lips and takes a sip while Henry gestures grandly toward the table and announces in a sloppy French accent, “We proudly present: your dinner!” Regina lets out a little giggle as Henry drops the accent and says, “We made lasagna.”

She looks mildly impressed, her brows popping up for a second and then falling again.

“Mom’s Day, huh?” Her gaze slides to Robin, a little bit accusatory even though her voice stays light. “You’ve been here all day?”

“Most of it,” he shrugs.

Her “What brought this on?” sounds like she knows _exactly_ what brought this on, but thankfully Henry comes to his rescue with the truth.

“Nothing,” the boy shrugs. “We just wanted to.”

“I was alone in bed minding my own business; someone was bored,” Robin tells her.

“He slept until _noon_ ,” Henry tells Regina, and he watches the way she smiles at her son, those rough edges smoothing out, something inside her seeming to settle.

“Well, he works until two AM, Henry,” Regina reminds. “I think he gets a pass on sleeping until noon.”

“That’s what I said,” Robin mutters, reaching for the wine and pouring a glass for himself, hoping she won’t mind. “And then I offered to make us lunch, but the fridge at my place was a bit bare,” he admits with a little grimace. “So we came here to make our sandwiches, and there were things to be done, so… we did them.” He drops his voice a little, his tone warm and tender when he murmurs, “You’ve had a long week.”

She gives this little half-smile, half-frown in acknowledgement, then a grateful nod, and then she turns to Henry and asks, “Things to be done, hmm?”

“Uh huh,” the boy nods. “We did the chore list for tomorrow, so you wouldn’t have so much to do. We cleaned the kitchen, and the bathrooms, and did laundry—”

“Laundry?” she asks, her brows rising to her hairline, her head swinging toward Robin. “I hope you supervised this.”

“I did,” Robin admits, lot of good it did them. And she must be able to see it on his face, because she shifts from both brows raised in disbelief to one raised in suspicion. Her _What?_ is appropriately wary, and Robin sighs, telling her, “I may have turned some white socks a lovely shade of blue – nothing you can’t probably fix with a load of bleach.”

Regina exhales heavily, shaking her head and turning tail for the laundry room without another word.

Robin looks to Henry, sharing a dreading glance, before he tells the boy, “Why don’t you take out that salad, and the dressing, and all that, and I’ll go deal with Mum.”

Henry looks all too happy to stay out of the line of fire, nodding soberly before Robin follows after Regina.

  


**.::.**

  


He finds her in the laundry room, sighing over a rolled pair of socks that were formerly white.

She asks him just one word: “How?”

“I did them with the denims, because, you know, socks and all, who cares, right?” Clearly she does; she blows out an incensed little breath through her nose and plucks up her no-longer-white camisole from the basket of blues. “But there was a pair of dark jeans in there that bled color all over everything.”

At that, she freezes, glancing around the room in search of them and coming up empty.

“We took everything upstairs – Henry’s is all put away; yours are folded on your bed. Aside from these”—he gestures to the basket of stained whites—“in case you wanted to bleach them.”

“I see,” she tells him in that clipped tone he’s come to dread. “Those were new jeans; I was going to run them through once so they wouldn’t bleed onto my clothes when I wore them. Did you wash them cold?”

She turns as she asks, arms crossing over her chest, and Robin prickles with apprehension. Point one for Henry.

“I… No,” he admits, knowing from the tick of her jaw that it was the wrong answer.

She nods a little, and says, “And I suppose you dried them.”

Of course he had; why wouldn’t he? But apparently there’s a reason, he can see it on her face, in the way she’s trying to look less irked than she is about the whole thing.

So he ventures a tentative, “...Yes?”

He watches her wince a little and try to hide it, her tone falsely pleasant as she asks, “For, um, how long?”

“Until they were done,” he answers with a sinking feeling that only gets worse when she nods slowly.

“On hot, I’m guessing?” she asks, and she’s trying, really trying to look like she’s not angry with him, but he knows better by now. And he doesn’t think this is going to be the ride-you-til-you-come sort of angry.

“Should I not have?” he winces. “Jeans are heavy; they don’t dry on anything lower than hot.”

Regina shuts her eyes and breathes out, then shakes her head and opens them again, telling him, “It’s fine. Thank you. It’s just, um – denim is cotton. It shrinks. For jeans, I usually cold wash and half-dry on medium, and then hang dry the rest of the way.” No wonder Henry had such doubts at Robin’s ability to wash a load of clothes. “But… these have some stretch in them, they’ll be… fine, I’m sure.”

“Fuck. I’m sorry,” he sighs. “I thought I was doing something nice—”

She cuts him off, then, reassuring, “You were,” and this time the smile she gives him manages to look slightly _less_ annoyed, if not less weary. “Although you don’t need to suck up to me just because I’m angry with you—”

“I’m not,” Robin insists, because the last thing he wants is for her to think he’s using Henry to get back into her good graces. “I had a free day, Henry wanted to do something nice for you, and he thought if we did all the weekend chores today you could have a nice relaxing weekend, so… we did them. Apparently not very well.”

“No, you did well,” she says with a shake of her head, and then her gaze strays to that basket of blues, one hand falling to grip the edge of it as she smirks a little, amending, “Well… you did things. And I appreciate it.” She bites her lip for a moment, her nose doing that scrunchy thing he finds very cute when she adds, “Just maybe next time read a care tag before you put my $200 jeans in the dryer.”

Robin nearly chokes, his eyes popping wide as he blurts, “Christ, why do you pay that much for _jeans?_ ”

“I like the brand; they fit well.”

“So do Levi’s,” Robin tells her, but Regina just gives him a look. “Right, not the point. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she says, and he’s starting to feel a bit like they’re talking in circles. “They’re just jeans. And who knows, maybe a miracle occurred and they didn’t shrink. Maybe they just turned all my underwear blue.”

“Only the whites…” Robin shrugs, giving her what he hopes is his most sympathetic face. The one that could coax a smile out of Marian even in some of her darkest moods.

It nearly works, he can see the corner of Regina’s mouth curve up, but then she’s shaking her head and lecturing him on proper laundry habits again: “Which should be their own load, not something you throw in with— You know what? It doesn’t matter. Thank you. Let’s eat.”

“You’re not pissed?” he asks her, because as much as she’s saying it doesn't matter, she still looks bothered by the whole thing. And that’s not exactly what he wants on a night that was meant to make life easier for her.

Sure enough, she concedes with a slight nod of her head, “I’m a little pissed. I had plans for tonight – I was going to come home, and take Henry to the movies, and let him have way too much popcorn for dinner while I zoned out and…” she sighs heavily, finishes, “didn’t have to deal with anything for the rest of the evening. I wasn’t expecting company, and dinner, and blue underwear.”

Right. He’s an arse. He shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t have still been here, because she’d bloody told him this morning she was still pissed at him, and the last thing she probably wanted was to come home to him in her kitchen.

He feels a right git about the whole thing, for ruining her plans for the night, but can’t come up with anything more clever to say than, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Nobody did. It was just… a thought,” she says, and suddenly she looks very weary. Even more so than a moment ago, and all he wants to do is reach out and touch her, run his hands over her bare arms, through her soft tresses. He tucks his hands into his pockets instead as she tells him, “I had a long, frustrating day. A night of not having to deal with dinner, or...” She glances toward the door, dropping her voice as she admits, “...having to parent sounded nice. But then I was running late, and was afraid I’d miss dinner with him entirely, and I was so angry at myself, and _Sidney_ , and…”

Regina’s shoulders rise and fall in a little shrug.

“I left him alone most of last night after I got home – I went to bed early.” She drops her gaze slightly as she says it, crossing her arms over her chest, and Robin can practically feel the guilt leaching from her – guilt she has no business feeling as far as he’s concerned.

“You needed the rest,” he tells her, needlessly. The last thing she needs is someone telling her what she already knows.

“I know, but I don’t want him to feel neglected.” She glances up then, a sad little smile on her face as her fingers squeeze at her biceps. Robin hooks his thumbs through the loops of his belt to keep those hands firmly stowed in his pockets. “But I’ve been told, again and again, that sometimes I have to take care of me so I can take care of him. And as much as I hate it, right now taking care of me means letting myself have some time alone, time to recharge my batteries, so to speak. I figured the movies would be ‘alone enough.’”

“I could take him to the movies,” Robin suggests. “Then you could be alone, for real.”

But she shakes her head, and says, “No, I’ve already pawned him off on you this week; I don’t want that.”

Robin can’t believe he has to tell her this again, but he does: “I don’t mind, Regina.”

“I do,” she insists. “I’ve had migraines, and therapy, and _more_ therapy, and then last night…” She shakes her head, and says, “I feel like I’ve barely seen my son all week. I want to be with him. I was just hoping I could be with him, quietly, in a dark room where I could think – or not think, if I so chose.”

“We could turn on a movie here,” Robin suggests, and then he realizes that the ‘we’ there might be a bit presumptuous, and rushes to add, “Or you could. The two of you. I could go; I know you said you still needed more time. I should’ve shoved off before you got home.”

“No, you can stay,” she insists with a dismissive shake of her head. “I’m still burning off some of my anger, but if I have to be honest, a clean home, and a happy kid, and a warm dinner – they help. Especially if you didn’t do them to manipulate me back into your favor.”

Something clicks then – something in her choice of words that makes him wonder how often she’s been burned by her mother and then conned right back into her clutches with faux kindness or grand favors that she can’t refuse without being seen as impolite or childish.

So he tells her, “It wasn’t a manipulation,” careful to meet her eyes openly as he adds, “I promise.”

“I believe you.” One corner of her mouth twitches into a smirk (one that actually reaches her eyes, he’s glad to say), and she adds, “Besides, you cooked dinner, you should get to eat it. Assuming you did a better job of cooking than you did of washing my clothes.”

“Cooking came with clearer directions,” he tells her. “I’m pretty sure we did alright. And if we didn’t and I managed to ruin both laundry and dinner, I think my pride’s going to take a fatal blow. Not exactly a banner day for a fully grown adult with a child of his own; it’s a wonder I’ve lasted this long.”

That smirk widens into a smile, one he can’t help echoing himself.

“You have other attractive qualities,” she assures, biting at her bottom lip for half a moment (and he swears he catches her gaze flicking down his body and back up, but it’s so quick he thinks he maybe made it up). “One of which being your willingness to watch movies with my son on your night off.”

“You know I love spending time with him.”

“I do,” she agrees with a little nod of her head, and then she surprises him by saying, “It’s one of those other attractive qualities. Always has been.”

The sentiment isn’t exactly news, but she’d seemed so irritated with him five minutes ago; he hadn’t expected the smooth slide into flirtation from her. He’s not going to take it for granted though, not when he can use it as an excuse to finally reach out for her, to wrap his fingers around her elbow and close the gap between them as he attempts to come up with some sort of witty retort of his own.

She doesn’t give him the chance.

Instead, she’s looping her arms loosely around his waist and saying, “If you don’t mind, I think I’d like a night in, with all three of us. It’s not what I had planned, but we could have some dinner, you guys can go put something on in the den while I take a long, relaxing bath, and then maybe I’ll catch the end of whatever you’re watching?” Robin spreads his hands over her waist, her hips, pressing her closer as she muses, “He won’t feel neglected, and I can take some downtime without feeling like a bad mom.”

“You’re a great mum,” Robin insists, hoping the sentiment isn’t hindered at all by the way one hand slips down to settle over the curve of her arse, or the little reassuring squeeze he gives it as he tells her, “Needing some time to yourself now and then doesn’t change that. And I think a night in at your place sounds great. Whatever you need to feel less stressed, right?”

“I wasn’t aware that applied to childcare,” Regina smirks.

“Doesn’t it usually?” he asks, giving her a gentle rock back and forth.

“Yes,” she concedes with another little smile, lifting an accusatory brow to add, “Just try not to screw up anything else while I’m upstairs?”

The hand not on her ass lifts to comb through her hair, scratching at the back of her head in that way that makes her lashes flutter as he swears, “We’ll play video games. Watch movies. No more housework, I promise. Just a quiet night for everyone, like you want.”

She breathes in, and her belly presses in against his, her tits against his chest, and Robin wants her again already. Somehow he doesn’t think _that_ is going to happen just now, but it doesn’t keep him from suggesting, “And maybe when the evening is over, I can… tuck you in?”

Regina chuckles softly, but her gaze drops away, down, to the side, and he knows he’s being shot down even before her kind, “I don't think that’s a good idea tonight. Not with Henry home. And besides, if we’re going to do this back-and-forth, whatever-I-need arrangement, I need to know that we can keep our hands to ourselves every now and then.”

Robin takes the hint, and drops his hand from her ass, letting it skim the curve of her cheek as it drops to his side. Regina surprises him by reaching for it and winding their fingers together, giving them a little squeeze as she adds, “No matter how much we might want to do otherwise…”

The _we_ makes him grin again; at least the wanting is mutual.

“Alright,” he assures, but he indulges long enough to lean in and peck a kiss to her lips. “No tucking you in. But we should probably get back to the kitchen, before Henry comes looking to see if you’ve murdered me over laundry, as he was so worried you might.”

Regina laughs at that, finally, and fully, letting go of his hand and bringing her own up to tuck her hair behind her ear as she steps back to put a reasonable amount of space between them.

“We wouldn’t want that,” she agrees, and then, “Someday, I’m going to have you over and teach you how to do laundry like a woman. For the sake of _Roland’s_ socks, if no one else’s.”

“You sure it’s not just to get yourself some free labor?” he teases, and Regina looks him up and down slightly, a little glint in her eyes.

Her “Who said free? There may be a _reward_ , for a job well done,” is quiet, but quite clear, and Robin finds himself with a sudden keen interest in how to do laundry just the way she likes it.

  


**.::.**

  


The lasagna is delicious, even more so with the knowledge that she didn't have to lift a finger to bring it into existence. All she'd had to do was grab that glass of wine from the counter, and toe her shoes off under the table after she sat down.

Henry and Robin had done the rest, plating her a generous slice of lasagna and an even more generous helping of salad, insisting that she let them take care of all the serving – it was Mom’s Day, after all.

It was sweet. Thoughtful. A far-less-terrible version of the Mother's Day she'd not been able to enjoy. Even if her whites were no longer quite so white, and the lasagna was a little dry (she doesn't hold that against them – she'd been late), the whole thing puts a smile on her face, eases some of the tension that had been an aching, tightening band at the base of her skull when she'd walked in.

Her plan for the movies had been a last ditch effort to avoid a night of having to do another single thing, but truth be told, she's exhausted. Not having to drive is a relief. The prospect of changing into yoga pants and a t-shirt is a relief. The idea of a long soak in the tub, with a face mask, maybe a bath bomb… that sounds like heaven.

She'd slept last night, long and hard and medicated, but it seems sleep alone hadn't been enough. She needs a break. Needs quiet. Needs that therapist-mandated self-care she’s been so horribly neglecting lately.

And, it turns out, she needs this.

Needs Henry telling her animatedly how he _told_ Robin that laundry wasn't so easy, and how Robin had insisted he could do it anyway. Needs Robin smirking sheepishly at her around a mouthful of lasagna, and then insisting that he always managed to get his own clothes clean, how was he to know that her laundry system was more complicated than a Rubik’s cube?

It’s mundane, and _normal_ , and it doesn’t hurt. It’s not confusing. It just… is.

She grins, and tells Robin, “Rubik’s cubes are easy,” then watches him pause and scowl at her.

“Mom can solve them in like a minute!” Henry pipes up. “But she says she won't tell me how until I'm older. She wants me to try to figure it out myself first.”

“You never learn if someone always gives you a shortcut,” she shrugs.

“Dad taught you,” Henry points out, accusing, and she catches Robin's brows lifting with amusement.

“Yes, well,” she starts, pushing a bit of lasagna around on her plate. “Your dad was a college-aged man trying to impress a girl; I'm your mother. You don't get shortcuts.”

As Henry makes the face of one who thinks the world is woefully unfair, Robin insists, “I think I need to see this,” sounding at the same time doubtful and impressed.

Regina blows out a breath and tells him, “Another night. I don't think I'm up to puzzles tonight. It’s been a long day; my brain is fried, and my patience is shot.”

She doesn’t mean to say it with any particular emphasis behind it, but Robin glances past Henry toward the flowers she’d left on the counter, the subtlest of shifts in his expression turning it stony, his jaw tightening. Clearly, he thinks he knows where they came from.

But he’d be wrong, and she tells him so: “They’re from my father.”

He blinks, caught, and offers her a sheepish, “Oh,” just as Henry asks _What’s from Grandpa?_

Shit.

She’d said it without even really thinking of where the inevitable follow-up questioning might lead. Hopefully she can keep it short with a simple, “The flowers.”

Miraculously, Henry seems satisfied with that – at least, satisfied enough to keep his questioning to, “Why did Grandpa send you flowers?”

Regina blows out a breath, not wanting to go anywhere near the truth of _that_ question with a ten foot pole. The bouquet had been delivered just after lunch with a sweetly apologetic note from Daddy for any stress he’d caused her this weekend (she wasn’t sure whether she’d wanted to laugh or cry at that particular choice of words – “any stress” for four nights of terrible sleep and two hours of therapy).

She tells Henry, “Because of this weekend,” and hopes he doesn’t dig any deeper.

“Because of Grandma?”

Robin pauses for the briefest of moments, fork halfway to his mouth, and then he continues the journey, eyes steady on his plate as he chews. Subtle. Really subtle.

Thank God Henry is looking at _her_.

And thank God he accepts her, “Yeah, because of Grandma. He thought they’d cheer me up,” as answer enough.

All he says to that is, “Cool,” and “They’re pretty.”

Regina agrees that, “Yes, they are,” and then the table lapses into a not-quite awkward silence while they all chew, and swallow, and sip their drinks.

It’s too much dead air.

Too much weight filling into the empty spaces between them as they all sit there, and too much time for her to fill up with thoughts about how guilty she feels that the flowers made her feel resentful rather than grateful. So she breaks the sillence after a minute, telling Henry, “Now that all your laundry is done you can start packing for next weekend.”

The groan he lets out is unsurprising, as is his grumpy, “Do I have to go camping?”

It’s not the first time he’s let on that he’s not overly thrilled with his holiday weekend plans, and knowing Henry it won’t be the last before next week. But as always, her answer remains the same: “Yes, you do.”

“But I don’t _want_ to,” he sighs, and Regina offers a kind but not at all sympathetic, _Tough._

“What’s wrong with camping?” Robin asks just _before_ swallowing half a mouthful of lasagna. “It’s fun.”

“It’s with my uncle Liam,” Henry grouses, stabbing at his half-eaten lasagna with his fork as Robin’s head turns toward her with a curious tilt. “He only comes to visit like twice a year, and Mom says I have to go camping with him next weekend.”

“Daniel’s brother,” Regina answers the unspoken question in Robin’s eyes, talking to Henry as she adds, “And the reason he only comes ‘like twice a year’ is because he lives all the way up in Maine. But he has the holiday weekend off, and he wants to see his nephew.”

“I just don’t know him very well,” Henry sulks, his frown slipping toward a pout that tugs at her heartstrings. She hates forcing him into doing things he doesn’t want to – had hated every time she was forced into tedious socializing with half-strangers as a child. But this is different, this is family. It’s important.

And besides, as Robin so helpfully points out: “Maybe this is a good opportunity to _get_ to know him. If he wants to go camping, I bet he really wants to spend more time with you. I bet you’ll have loads of fun.”

It’s a valiant effort, but entirely in vain, because Henry may not be old enough to understand the lingering hard feelings of adult grief, but he’s certainly grown enough to recognize avoidance. Or at least to notice that, “He didn’t even call me until my birthday this year. If he really wanted to get to know me, he could have.”

“Oh,” Robin says, before offering up an entirely unhelpful, “Well, that’s rather crap, isn’t it?”

“Robin!” Regina hisses, shaking her head when he looks her way – he doesn’t even have the decency to look guilty for being so entirely dismissive of a situation he doesn’t truly understand. But he’s protective of Henry, and she knows that, knows that that’s where his nonchalant, dismissive shrug comes from.

Doesn’t mean she likes it any better.

But it’s something they can talk about another time; right now, she turns herself fully toward Henry and coaxes his gaze back up to her with an encouraging, “Hey. He loves you. Liam may not be around as much as Robin, or Grandpa, or even… David. But he loves you, a lot. I know he does.”

“I know,” Henry sighs, digging at his lasagna with the tines of his fork. “You tell me every time he comes.”

Robin, continuing his ever-so-helpful streak, pipes up to ask, “Does _he_ ever tell you?”

Regina doesn't miss a beat, her gaze flicking over to him sharply to challenge: “Do you?”

He adores Henry, they both—all—know it. Robin has done more than enough to show it – even just today, he’s proven it again. But Regina very much doubts that Robin has ever actually said the words to Henry, so if he’s going to throw stones…  

Robin looks at her for a moment, nods slightly, then glances down at his plate with a very clearly spoken, “Hey, Henry?”

“Yeah?” her son answers, and Regina’s heart trips over itself; she sees it coming.

Robin’s gaze rises again, and he looks straight at Henry, and tells him, “I love you.”

Henry smirks, and says, “I know. I love you too.”

Regina's eyes water for half a moment before she blinks the dampness away and shakes her head, trying to hide the way her heart just grew three sizes as she mutters, “Jerk.”

Now Robin is smirking, too, sitting back in his chair and asking teasingly, “Why? Because I ruined your point?”

“Yes,” Regina tells him, scooping up a bite of lasagna herself, and regretting it when Henry opens his mouth again, an all-too-innocent smile on his face.

“Hey, Robin, do you love my mom, too?” he asks slyly, perking up now that he has a much better topic to pounce on.

Regina nearly chokes, speaking around her food and keeping her eyes on her son and _definitely_ not on Robin.

“Alright young man,” she warns, swallowing half her mouthful before she attempts a stern, “Enough.”

She hopes that’ll be the end of it, but no, no, that’s not the day she’s having. The day she’s having is the one where Robin _answers_ Henry, despite her stern warning.

And she can’t avoid looking at him (it would look silly to try, and she’s drawn to him anyway, her heart knocking a little harder as he starts to speak).

“Your mum matters to me, quite a bit,” he says, and it doesn’t escape her notice that he doesn’t look at her when he says it like he had with Henry – he gives her that amount of reprieve, at least. “You both do. I'm lucky I accidentally broke into the home of such nice people.”

A non-answer paired with a deflection, God, she could just kiss him.

Instead, she relaxes and orders her heart to slow its racing, reaching for her wine and teasing, “You're lucky I didn't call the police.”

“Very,” he smirks, meeting her gaze, then, and holding it for just a moment too long.

Regina sucks in a breath, sipping that wine, and then saying pointedly, “But back to what I was saying…” She sets the wine down, looks to Henry. “Your uncle loves you, and you'll have a good time. But you’ll only be an hour away, so if by Sunday afternoon, you're not having a good time, I'll come get you. Okay?”

“Fine,” he sulks, face falling at the return to topic.

“But I really want you to try, Henry. This is important to your uncle, and I know it would be important to your dad.”

He nods, and she thinks maybe that’ll be it. He’s still moving his lasagna around his plate more than eating it, but for a good twenty seconds he doesn’t say anything else. It’s long enough that she takes two more bites, has just popped the second one in her mouth when he says quietly, “Dad’s not here to care.”

Regina feels her heart beat, two hard knocks in her chest and then a squeezing rise up into her throat, the telltale prick of impending tears at the back of her eyes that she has to blink away quickly.

She’s not sure if she’s glad to have a mouthful left to chew or not – it keeps her from having to think of something to say to _that_ , at the very least – but she knows she’s grateful for Robin, who doesn’t wait for her to swallow (or for her heart to rise back up from the way it just plummeted from her thick throat straight down to the kitchen tile), before he’s frowning at Henry, and telling him, “Don’t say things like that to your mum. You’re going camping with your uncle, you’re going to have a good time, and if you don’t, you're going to call your mum.”

“I thought you said it was rather crap,” Henry scowls, but Robin just shakes his head at him.

“That was before you sassed your mum about her dead fiancé; now I’m on her side,” he says, and she really should stop this.  
  
In fact, she’s going to, she starts to, says, “Robin, it’s fi—” but she never gets the rest of the word out.

“Don’t say it’s fine; it’s not fine,” he interrupts her. “You’ve had a shit week, and everyone at this table knows it. It’s not fine for him to say something like that to you because he doesn’t like the plans you’ve made for him.”  
  
He turns his attention to Henry then, and tells him, “Maybe you don’t know your uncle that well, and you didn’t know your dad. But your mum loved your dad, and she doesn’t need a reminder that he isn’t here to care about how she raises you; I’d wager she’s well aware he’s not here every day she spends raising his son alone. So if she wants you to go spend time getting to know your dad’s brother for a few days, because that’s what he would want, then that’s what you’re going to do. Because you’re eleven, and she’s your mum, and she knows what’s best, and because she’s spent eleven years having to do all the parenting for two people.”

She should say something. Should _stop_ this, because she is Henry’s parent, not Robin. But Henry is listening to Robin, really _listening_ , their gazes locked steady on each other despite the way Henry has ducked and set his chin, his lips pinched into that stubborn scowl.

She should stop this, but she wants to see how it’s going to play out, and quite frankly Robin is right – and saying all the things she knows she’d bite back and swallow down.

So she watches Robin speak frankly with her son, a far cry from the man-to-man talk they’d had in the front seat of his car in the Rabbit Hole parking lot a couple of weeks ago, but perhaps no less important. Both in content, and for this relationship between the two of them that she’s been so gratefully tending all summer.

Maybe Liam is a fair-weather uncle, but Robin has parked himself down in the middle of the hurricane, unmoving.

So she lets him ride this one out, lets him tell Henry, “Now say you’re sorry, because she’ll try to hide it, but what you said really hurt your mum’s feelings.”

“How would you know?” Henry sasses back – she’d really thought Robin had him there for a second, thinks he might have if he’d just stopped at asking for the apology. But no, he had to go and light a fire under Henry’s stubborn side.

Unfortunately for her son, Robin has a mulish streak to match. He leans forward slightly, enough that he’s more eye level with Henry, and tells him, “Because I saw her face when you said it – and I saw the way you wouldn’t look at her. Because you knew it wasn’t a nice thing to say, that’s why you had to screw up your courage before you did. So congratulations, you were brave enough to say the crappy thing. Now, man up and apologize for it.”

That gets him. She’s not sure quite how, or why, but it does. Henry drops his gaze for a second, then takes a breath and looks at her, and she can see in his eyes that he’s genuinely remorseful when he says, “I’m sorry, Mom. That was a mean thing to say. I’m just nervous to spend two whole days with him. I know he loves me, and I like him, too, but it’s never been that long before. And we’re going to be out in the middle of nowhere.”

Regina relaxes – she hadn’t realized just how tense she was until she’d exhaled and felt all her muscles go loose – and shifts her chair a little closer to Henry’s, reaching out for him and wrapping his fingers up in hers.

“You’re going to be in a campground. I wouldn’t let him take you to the middle of nowhere – you’re not going anywhere I can’t easily find my way to you in the middle of the night. I have the address, and a map, and I made your uncle promise to tell me your site number the minute you set up camp. I know you’re nervous, sweetheart,” she says, rubbing her thumb over his knuckles. “And it’s okay to be nervous about new things. But I know you’re going to have a good time – your uncle and your dad used to do this all the time, and they had _so much_ fun. And I’ll be right here, right by the phone, and I will make Liam promise to have you call every night to say goodnight to me, so if you’re not having any fun, you’ll be able to tell me. And I _promise you_ , I will come. I won’t make you suffer through something you hate; I am not your grandma. But I will make you _try_ , okay?”

He nods again, his shoulders rising and falling in a resigned sigh, and Regina shifts out of her chair long enough to reach over and pull him into a hug. His arms band tightly around her neck and she presses her face into his t-shirt, gives him a little squeeze and tells him quietly, “I love you. And thank you for the apology – all’s forgiven.”

He murmurs, “Love you too,” into another squeeze and then she draws back and settles into her chair just in time to catch him wincing over at Robin.

“Are you still mad at me?”

“Nah,” Robin dismisses, giving Henry a smile. “You were wrong, and you said you were sorry – and even told your mum what you were really feeling. So to be honest, I’m pretty proud of you right now.” He glances over at her, as he finishes, “Not everyone is brave enough to be honest when they’re scared.”

It punches the breath out of Regina just a bit, has her thinking of how he’d lied to her, and all the ways she’s been lying to herself. All the little knots she’s had to tug and tug and tug free with Dr. Hopper the last few weeks.

Regina gives him a little nod, and then reaches to take a generous gulp of her wine.

  


**.::.**

  


The night improves after that.

Dinner may have gotten off to a rocky start, but by the time their plates are empty, the mood has lightened and they’re back to Henry ribbing Robin for trying to put Ho-Hos _and_ Twinkies in the grocery cart – and then listing out the truly pathetic contents they’d found in Robin’s fridge this morning.

How on earth she fell so hard for a man who can’t even keep his fridge well-stocked or understand the basics of laundry, she’ll never understand. How she finds those things _charming_ is even more of a mystery.

Less of a mystery is how much she loves the way he makes Henry laugh (even if he accomplishes it by lobbing a cherry tomato across the kitchen table right into the center of her son’s forehead), or the way her knees go a little weak every time he grins (she’d blame the dimples but really it’s just that he has a wonderful smile). The lingering ache of her revelations on Dr. Hopper’s couch last night is beginning to fade away, that affection she’s been so wary to indulge in starting to slowly take over.

She tells herself to let it. That it’s okay to lean in, okay to feel that little flutter in her chest when he tells Henry a really stupid joke, something truly immature and childish that sends her son into stitches again. Okay to admire the blue of his eyes, or the way his tongue swipes out to lick a stray smear of bolognese from his lower lip.

She’s supposed to be feeling this out, taking the pressure off herself, the limitations off herself.

So she’s just going to let herself… feel everything. Crack open that door in her heart she’s been trying to keep shut against all this and let some air in, let herself breathe a bit.

She’s going to work on going with the flow.

Tonight, that means that when Robin refills her wine and Henry orders her to leave the kitchen so they can clean up (“Moms don’t get to do any work on Mom’s Day,” he insists), she lets herself be pampered and goes without protest.

Glass of cab in one hand and high heels in the other, she climbs the stairs and heads for her bedroom.

She can tell immediately that her bed has been remade, even with it covered in clothes the way it is. Her pillowcases are different – they’ve been swapped for the deep plum set that had been in the linen closet, and the throw pillows she hadn’t had the energy to pile on her bed this morning are neatly arranged. It seems the boys washed bedding as well as clothes.

They must have done laundry all day – there’s a stack of shirts and blouses neatly laid out on her duvet, a little pile of underwear next to it (she winces at the sight of some of her lacier pairs in the pile – those shouldn’t have gone into the dryer, and she’s absolutely positive they had), and a stack of neatly folded pants and leggings nearby, her brand new Rag & Bone skinny jeans menacingly perched at the top of the pile.

She’ll try them on in a minute, she decides – first, all these tops need to find a home.

Most of them end up hung in her closet – the dressier ones, the button-downs, the blouses. The t-shirts get folded neatly and tucked away, as do most of the jeans, and all but one pair of the leggings. It feels like a leggings kind of night – leggings, and a sports bra, and a comfy t-shirt. Something she can pretend she’ll wear on the treadmill while Robin and Henry watch movies, until she decides she just doesn’t have the energy.

She already knows she’s too tired for a proper run (and she wants a bath, it’s silly to bathe and then run, and who wants to run and then marinate in bathwater full of their own sweat?), but the intent makes her feel better. Going through the motions makes her feel better.

So she’ll put on the leggings, and the sports bra, and one of her hoodies, and she’ll end up a lazy lump on the sofa in her workout gear.

That’s fine.

But first, she needs to see how much damage Robin did to these jeans.

**.::.**

  


Henry mentions dessert – insists on it, rather. Ice cream sundaes, with the berries they bought today, and chocolate sauce, and maybe they can run to Robin’s and grab some of the whipped cream they’d packed away in _his_ fridge after they’d gotten back from the store.

But (as much as Regina wishes otherwise) Robin can’t unknow what he’s learned about Regina this week, and while she’s been in good spirits all night, she’s also cleared a full plate of food. Carby, cheesy, heavy food. And it’s not his business, and he’d promised he wouldn’t make a big deal out of it, but the last thing he wants is to accidentally add stress to her night with the prospect of an indulgent dessert.

So he gets Henry to hold off on dessert for a minute – tells him to run next door and grab the whipped cream just in case, and take Tuck out for a quick piss while he’s at it. In the meantime, Robin will go see if Mum is ready for dessert yet (or at all).

Henry falls for it, no problem, and as he pulls on his trainers, Robin goes in search of Regina.

When he finds her, his heart sinks.

She’s standing in her bedroom, in view of the full length mirror on the inside of her open closet door, dressed in just her bra and a pair of dark wash jeans that cinch her waist just a _little_ too tightly. He wouldn’t notice, not really, except she’s twisting this way and that, scowling, tilting her torso just a little, and giving a disappointed poke to the miniscule little muffin top the jeans have managed to squeeze up.

He doesn’t have to ask to know which jeans they are, and he knows for certain they’re too tight for her comfort.

“Fuck,” he sighs, alerting her to his presence – she jumps a little, then exhales and reaches for the button of her fly as he tells her, “I'm sorry.”

Her hips give a little shimmy, working the denim down over the curve of her arse as she dismisses, “It's fine. It's done. Your heart was in the right place.”

She sounds disappointed, but not angry, not really. So that’s something, at least.

Robin watches her tug the jeans off her legs and fold them neatly, appreciating the rear view, and the tempting red of her underwear. He’s only mildly disappointed that it’s not a thong like last night – and on that note…

Robin shuts the door to give them a bit of privacy – why, he doesn’t know; Henry should be out the door by now. But the last thing he wants is for him to overhear what Robin is about to say.

Before he gets a chance to so much as open his mouth, though, Regina is making a face and reminding, “No – not here, not while he's up.”

“I know, I remember.” He holds up his hands, all innocence, and leans his back against the door before adding a cheeky, “Although he’s run next door to let the dog out, so we do have a minute.”

Regina’s brows lift, a doubtful sort of expression that reiterates her position very clearly, no words required.

“I just wanted to talk,” Robin assures her.

That seems to appease her, has her reaching back to unhook her bra casually as she asks, “About what?” and good Christ, she can’t expect him to not be tempted when she’s flashing her tits all about for him, can she?

But then she turns her back, walks toward her dresser and grabs something from one of the upper drawers, and Robin forces himself to stick to the topic she’s just reminded him of moments ago: “The underwear I took from you last night – it was part of a set, wasn't it? You matched.”

“It was,” she confirms as she tugs on a sports bra (he feels even worse about those jeans, now that it seems their fit has immediately sent her for the workout gear).

But he’d promised not to mention it, so he bites back any reassurances that her body looks positively edible at the moment and she needn’t do anything about it, asking instead, “Do you want it back?”

Regina pauses with a pair of leggings in hand, tilting her head ever so as she says to him, “I thought you wanted a... souvenir?”

“I did – I do,” he shrugs, watching as she tugs the leggings up and on. “But if it was a favorite or something, I could be interested in a trade.”

Regina pauses long enough to laugh at him, arms crossing over her chest as she says, “A trade, hmm?”

“Mmhmm.”

She chuckles again, warmly, and he’s glad that at least his destruction of her far-too-expensive jeans hasn’t dampened her spirits irreparably.

And then she tells him, “If you’re hoping for a pair that’s been worn, I feel the need to point out that you just washed all of my underwear – and poorly, I might add. Half of those are hand wash delicates.”

Christ, he just can’t bloody win, can he?

“I at least used the delicate cycle,” he offers up in penance.

“Well that's something.”

For a moment, Regina simply looks at him, and then she slips her thumbs into the waistband of her leggings, pushing them and her underwear down. Robin’s mouth goes a bit dry at the sudden and unexpected peek at all her bits, but it doesn’t last long. Only enough for her to toss the panties his way with a little grin, before she’s tugging the leggings back up with nothing beneath them.

God, that’s going to kill him for the rest of the night.  

“I have more in red,” she shrugs as Robin catches the underwear with a grin.

It’s red lace today, even better than last night’s, if not as skimpy. He shoves them deep into his pocket and tells her, “I'll bring the other ones back tomorrow.”

Regina just nods, and leans back against the dresser a bit, her arms rising to cross over her chest again. “Do I want to know what you’re doing with these?” she wonders, and Robin shrugs.

“Just… admiring,” he tells her. “Imagining how great you look in them. Missing you.”

“Mmhmm,” she hums doubtfully.

“You don’t believe me?” he questions, finally making a move toward her now that she’s fully dressed and less likely to mistake his proximity for any sort of inappropriate advance. Not that it’s terribly appropriate to be telling her, “You have very sexy knickers, Regina, I like getting a chance to admire them.”

Her brows slip up, up. “And take them home.”

“When you’ll let me,” he confirms, closing the gap between them and letting his hands settle on the curve of her waist. She doesn’t make a single move in his direction, but she doesn’t push him away either, so Robin doesn’t feel the least bit guilty about the way his thumbs rub over her hips as he murmurs into the scant space between them, “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anyone the way I wanted you – want you. Waiting for you was…” He looks her down, up. Watches her lick her lips, watches her inhale. He doesn’t have the words for how torturous it was to _wait_ for her, nor for how incredible it was to finally have her underneath him, on top of him. So he doesn’t even bother, telling her instead, “They’re sexy, and they remind me of you. That’s all.”

Her teeth sink into her lower lip for a second, the corners of her mouth curving up before she admits quietly, like it’s a secret, “It feels a little… naughty.”

“She says with a smirk,” he points out, and Regina just offers up this little shrug.

“It’s been awhile since I’ve been able to be naughty,” she tells him, conceding, “So maybe it’s also a little fun. Just… keep them in a safe place, okay? The last thing I need is for Tuck to go running through the house with a pair of my panties in his teeth for both our sons to see.”

Robin thinks of the thong hastily tucked under his pillow, and says, “I promise.”

“Good.” Regina’s fingers are suddenly in his pocket, shoving that little bunch of lace down even deeper for good measure, before she asks him (and how she expects him to think when her hand is practically in his pants, he’ll never know), “Now, what did you actually come up here for? Because I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a panty swap.”

Robin grins, winding his arms around her waist to draw her closer, ducking in to steal a kiss and then conceding, “No. It wasn’t – although I am awfully chuffed at this turn of events, I assure you.” She makes this teasing little humming sound, and he continues, “I was sent to do recon on whether or not you’re feeling up to ice cream sundaes for dessert.”

He’s not terribly surprised when her nose wrinkles slightly, but he’s not expecting the reason she gives: “I just got changed; I don’t want to get dressed just to go out and get ice cream.”

“No leaving the house required,” Robin assures her, letting his thumbs spread up along the dip of her spine if for no other reason than that it keeps them from swooping down to grab her ass again. “We bought some this afternoon. Strawberry, and rocky road. And there are raspberries, and Henry is getting some whipped cream from my place as we speak.”

“In that case…” Her knee brushes against his leg, and Robin realizes that she’s not really standing so much anymore as she is pinned between him and the dresser, but she doesn’t seem to mind a bit. Especially when that knee was shifting so she could loop her ankle around the back of his calf as she’s just done. “...I think ice cream sounds great.”

“Mm.”

Fuck it, he’s going to kiss her. He can’t imagine she’ll be all that bothered by it, coiled around him like she is right now.

He doesn’t make it a proper snog, doesn’t even slip her a bit of tongue, just leans in and kisses her warmly, lingers over her lips in lazy presses that she happily sighs into and returns. Her hand finally pulls itself from his pocket, wrapping around his waist and delving into the _back_ pocket instead, earning a huffed little snicker from him as he slants his head just slightly for a new angle. It’s _her_ tongue that peeks out, brushing against his lower lip, and then coaxing his own out to play for a moment. Light, teasing brushes against each other as one of the hands at her waist lifts to tangle in her hair.

They indulge for another moment, and then she’s drawing back, smiling warmly at him, and saying, “We’re not very good at the whole keeping-our-hands-off-each-other thing, are we?”

Robin refuses to feel bad about it this time though – not with her having a palmful of his arse as she says it.

“Have we ever been?” he asks, and Regina just laughs, and shakes her head.

“No, not really,” she concedes, but then she’s pulling those hands back, settling that hooked ankle back onto the floor, and giving him a gentle push to ease him back. Much to his chagrin. “But I do want to try, tonight. And besides, I’ve been promised ice cream. And I can’t very well eat that with us all wrapped up in each other.”

Robin can’t resist, can’t possibly: “Oh, I think I could find a way,” he assures, grinning and earning another laugh.

“I bet,” she mutters, stepping around him and reaching for a hoodie hooked over her closet door – his hoodie, he realizes with a skipped beat in his chest as he watches her shrug into it and zip it up.

“Come on,” she urges. “Let’s go eat a little ice cream, and then I’m going to come back up here, and take that bath.”

It’s a fine plan if Robin’s ever heard one, and as he watches her walk out of the room, he feels a little punch of pride in his chest.

A few minutes later, Robin watches her laugh with her son as she takes spoonfuls of rocky road dotted with tart raspberries and a little dollop of whipped cream, watches her nose crinkle as she smiles, and decides he’s done pretty damn well for them all. It hasn’t been a perfect evening, not really, but she’s happy – happier than he thinks he’s seen her in quite some time. Affectionate, and warm, and without the constant press of unease she’d been bending under these last few days – weeks.

And no, he isn’t solely responsible for her rising mood, but he can’t help but think that taking the pressure off them has helped. That taking a load off her weekend has helped.

So maybe he’s shit at shopping, and surprisingly bad at laundry, but he’s not a total failure.

And the last week may have been hell for Regina, but her weekend won’t be. And for that, at least, Robin is pretty pleased with himself.


	42. Chapter 42

She'd slept well last night. Well, and long. They'd had that ice cream, and then she'd retreated upstairs, thrown a bath bomb in the tub, slathered her face in a hydrating mask, lit a couple of aromatherapy candles, and soaked until her fingers started to shrivel up like prunes. A quick rinse in the shower to wash her hair and send the colorful remnants of that bath bomb down the drain and she'd emerged feeling relaxed and refreshed.

Sleepy, even.

She'd considered popping a Sonata and just going straight to sleep, but she'd told the boys she'd be back down in a while, so she'd pulled on soft cotton sleep pants and a camisole instead and padded down to the living room.

They'd been hunkered down on the couch with a big bowl of popcorn between them, Henry bringing piece after piece to his mouth like a zombie, eyes riveted to the screen as Frodo was stabbed by one of the Nazgûl. How he could still have been hungry had been beyond her – he'd had a second slim piece of lasagna, and a big bowl of ice cream, and _then_ popcorn. But he'd worked hard all day (the toilet had been gleaming, the bathroom counters spotless, the floors swept if not scrubbed), and he's a growing boy; she wasn't going to fuss at him over one night of binging.

Robin had looked up when she'd walked in, giving her this soft smile that made her insides melt at all the affection it held, and then he'd nodded toward the empty stretch of sofa beside him in invitation.

He'd left space for her, she'd realized – parked himself in the middle of the cushions instead of on the opposite side of Henry. Regina had curled up in the empty space, pulling a throw from the back of the sofa over her tucked knees, her feet pressed to Robin's thigh. When his hand had snuck beneath the blanket, she'd had a truly insane half-second of concern that he was going to try to get fresh with her while Henry was in the room, but he'd just found one of her feet and started to rub deep circles into her arches as best he could manage.

It had been deliciously lulling, had had her eyelids drooping in short order, her head bobbing slightly where it had been propped against her fist. But her back had been twisted funny, her neck at an odder and odder angle the more relaxed she'd become, and she'd found herself squirming, shifting, trying to get more comfortable. 

“You alright?” he'd rasped, fingers squeezing against her foot.

Regina had nodded and uttered something about a kink in her neck, so Robin had given Henry a nudge with his elbow and insisted he, “Move to the floor; let your mum stretch out.”

Henry had gone without protest (taking the popcorn with him), leaving Robin room to scoot over to the far side of the sofa. Regina had moved to sink down lower into the cushions, but he’d stopped her, urging her to turn and lay her head on his lap instead.

She'd widened her eyes at him, looking pointedly at the back of Henry’s head with an expression that she’d hoped conveyed how utterly _insane_ that suggestion was. If he'd thought her willingness to feel this out translated to a willingness to cuddle up on his lap in front of her _son_ , boy, did she have news for him.

But Robin had just rolled his eyes and told her, “I'll work on that kink in your neck for a bit.”

And _that_ had sounded reasonable, innocent enough, so she'd nodded and shifted and settled down again with her head very near his knee. He'd rubbed his thumbs firmly along her neck, combed his fingers lightly through her damp waves, and Regina had been out cold before the fellowship left Rivendell.

She'd woken up in her own bed at quarter to ten this morning, disoriented, but very well rested.

For the first time in a while, she feels like herself. Her brain isn’t pulsing with exhaustion or buzzing with anxiety, and aside from the prospect of seeing her father tomorrow when he comes to pick up Henry, she doesn’t have anything to dread for two whole days. And that isn’t even dread, so much as a lingering anxiety over their last conversation – something she’s determined to put behind her as soon as she can manage.

She’s desperate for normalcy, for some kind of steady ground under her feet after a week spent with her foundation lurching to and fro. Thursday had helped, and last night had helped, and now that all the chores appear to be done, she can turn this weekend into one focused on that dedicated self-care Dr. Hopper wants her so badly to pick back up.

She starts with a run – she’s been too bone-tired for a proper one lately, but she spends this morning working up a good sweat, imagining all her stress, all her worries, pounding out through her sneakers every time they hit the belt. Out, and back, and off as it spins and spins beneath her feet. Shooting away from her and then dissolving into nothing.

It helps, it feels good. Her muscles feel looser, less itchy from too long without use. Her blood feels warm, pumping through her veins. She even revels in the sweat today, doesn’t quit until she’s beaded with it, feels it dripping down her spine, between her breasts, curling the hair at her temples.

Doesn’t stop until she feels _alive,_ and _awake_ , and _free._

  
And then she doesn’t even bother with a shower. Just peels off her sweaty workout clothes and trades them for worn jean shorts and a threadbare tank top, throws on Daniel’s old Red Sox cap to cover her hair and heads out to do some work in her poorly neglected garden.

She’s three steps out the door when her good morning comes to a screeching halt.

 

**.::.**

 

He hadn’t seen it earlier.

He’d gone out the back door to his car, had come in the same way after picking up Roland, so Robin hadn’t seen the front of her house until after noon, when they’d finished their snack and Roland had asked if please pretty please could he go next door and tell Regina and Henry about the pet goldfishes they’d gotten at daycare that week.

Not seeing any reason why not (and not at all because he’s become quite addicted to spending time with her in recent days), Robin had told him that was fine, and had walked behind him out the front door, amused at his son’s excitement.

He’d taken the steps at a walk while Roland had trotted his way down and torn off across the stretch of yard between his door and Regina’s.

She’d been standing out front, in a pair of criminally sexy cut-off shorts and a tank top, gardening gloves on her hands and a ball cap on her head (who knew she even owned one of those?), and he’d been so distracted by taking her in that he’d barely paid attention to what was wrong.

Not until Roland had skidded to a stop at her side, and she’d tipped her head down to frown at him.

Even then, he’d noticed her first – the slump of her shoulders, the way she wasn’t actually _weeding_ , but simply _standing._ The way the smile she’d given his boy didn't in any way reach her eyes before she'd crouched next to him and forced it wider.

It was the bending that finally had him realizing – her lemon queens. The sunny yellow blooms he’d had to gingerly pick his way across her garden to reach a week ago are all bent and broken – as are all their fellows.

Her garden has been positively beat to shit.

Bent stalks and trampled blooms, all her well-tended charges cut down before their prime, and as he takes a few steps closer, finally closes the distance between them, his blood rushes cold and then pumps hot.

Someone has spray painted BITCH across the brickwork of her porch in bold black, and how fucking dare they.

She’s murmuring something to Roland as Robin steps up behind her and asks lowly, “Who did this?”

Because if it’s that useless, feckless wanker she works with, Robin is done being polite about it.

But Regina straightens and shakes her head, says, “It’s just… kids who need more to do. It’s been happening in the neighborhood all summer. Granny Lucas right before Henry’s birthday, the Hatters around the fourth of July, and a half dozen others on neighboring blocks, too, I think.” Her arms cross tightly over her chest, her gaze straying up, back, to the painted slur on her porch. “But I’m pretty sure that’s new.”

“Who would hurt the flowers?” Roland asks, his voice wet and wobbly, and Robin curses these so-called bored kids for casting such a blow to his boy’s tender heart.

Regina’s holding one of Roland’s hands in hers, Robin realizes, watching as her thumb rubs the back of Roland’s little paw. “Someone very naughty,” she sighs, and Roland agrees.

“Very, very naughty,” he scolds their long-gone aggressors, “They should sit on the time-out chair.”

It makes her smile, has her crouching down again and telling him, “They definitely should,” before she asks, “Do you want to help me clean up some of the hurt flowers?” Her glance flicks up to Robin, and then, “If it’s okay with your Daddy.”

“It’s okay,” Roland insists without a care as to whether Robin might agree. He does, though, nodding at Regina with a little smile and then looking immediately to all that ugly black paint when she turns her attention back to the plastic bin bag near her feet.

He wants it gone.

He knows she’s right about the others, remembers the way Granny had griped when it had happened to her, but still, there’s something unsettling about the spray paint. It seems… pointed. Personal. Vicious.

Nobody else had been branded a bitch. 

The fact that Regina has makes his hands clench into useless fists. It’s probably wrong to want to beat a bunch of asshole kids’ heads in, but it’s how he feels at the moment. Was this how people felt when he was sixteen and busting car windows to nick stereo systems, and decorating the sides of buildings with spray paint?

Probably, he realizes, and well, isn’t that an unfortunate turn of the tables.

Still, he’d had to learn his lessons, and these little punks ought to, as well.

Not that he can do anything about it without having a bloody clue who they are.

His own uselessness eats at him, and Robin crosses his arms tightly, blunt nails digging into his palms as he tells himself to let it go, it’s done. Nobody got hurt except some well-tended flowers (and his son’s tender heart, and Regina’s already beleaguered emotions, no doubt, and doesn’t he get to be angry about both of those?).

He doesn’t realize how lost he’s gotten in his own bubbling temper until he hears Regina’s muttered, “I don’t suppose you know how to get spray paint off brick?”

She’s staring at it now, too, her jaw tense, lips pursed as she squints over the top of where Roland is gently plucking a battered bloom to place in the trash.

“A power washer would do it,” he tells her, and she scoffs, snorting and rolling her eyes.

“I’ll just go grab mine from the garage,” she drawls sarcastically, tugging the hat off her head and dragging her hand through messy waves.

“I know a guy,” Robin assures her. “I’ll make a call, see if I can get it taken care of this weekend.”

“Thank you.” She plunks that cap back onto her head, an errant, spiraling lock poking out next to her ear. He focuses on that instead of the anger coursing through him, traces the corkscrewing shape of it right up until she says, “If there’s any way we can get it off by lunchtime tomorrow, that would be ideal. My dad is coming to pick Henry up for his riding lesson. I don’t want him to see it – he’ll tell Mother, and it’ll end up one more thing she tries to use to convince me I should move.”

“I’ll see if I can get it today,” he assures her. “I’ll go get my phone right now, and call.” 

Regina nods, and takes a deep breath, her hand rising to tuck her hair back behind her ear before she realizes that there’s no need with the cap on. It falls uselessly back to her side, then rises again to cross over her chest with the other as she murmurs another thank-you, and then tells him, “Let me know what I owe you—or whoever I owe.”

Robin frowns at that, and assures her, “Don’t worry about it; I’ve got it.”

“No, I can—” she starts, but he’ll have none of it. If he can’t beat the snot out of some kids, he’s at least going to have the satisfaction of blasting the word into oblivion. That’s payment enough.

“Regina, please,” he interrupts. “Let me fix this. I doubt he’ll charge me to borrow it, but even if he does…” He traces the dark, dripping letters again with his gaze and mutters quietly, “I’m not taking your money to take that off your porch.”

“If you’re sure...”

He tells her he is, and she sighs heavily, her voice weary when she says, “This isn’t how I planned on spending my day – picking through what’s left of my flowers, and… I don’t know if I should bother to go get more and replant, or just admit defeat for the rest of the summer—”

“Fuck that.”

“Daddy!”

Robin’s head swings sharply to the side to find Roland giving him a look that’s startlingly reminiscent of Marian’s when she scolds. His chin even squares up just like his mother’s before he gives Robin a stern, “That's a naughty word.”

Regina lifts her brows, Robin clears his throat.

“Um… Sorry, Roland,” he mutters, wincing a little in Regina’s direction, and watching her try to tamp down a smirk at him being busted by his preschooler. “You’re absolutely right; I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were listening.”

“You can skip the naughty chair because you don’t have one,” Roland declares, “But you better not say it again.”

“I’ll try very hard not to, I promise,” Robin tells his son seriously; Regina’s shoulders shake with a laugh she can’t quite hold back.

Roland turns back to gingerly picking bruised flowers from the dirt, so Robin turns back to Regina, telling her, “What I meant to say was that I’ve never known you to be the type to back down when someone pushes you around.”

All her levity falls away at that, and she looks away from him, scowling, one brow rising and falling before she mutters, “I’m not so sure about that.”

“I am,” he tells her plainly. She's struggling right now and he knows that, but if she's having a hard time finding faith in her strength, he'll simply have to have faith enough for both of them. And she won't get knocked down without standing right back up, so he asks her, “Are there plants that’ll thrive this time of year? Make it through for a few weeks until it gets cold?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then maybe we’ll take a little field trip to the greenhouse or wherever,” Robin suggests. “Roland will love it. He’s never been.”

“I have!” Roland insists, looking up from his task. “Sadie’s house is green; I’ve been to a green house.”

Regina laughs softly at that, and Robin thanks heaven for the innocent confusion of preschoolers.

It has her bending again, crouching in front of Roland to explain, “No, baby, not a green _house,_ a _green_ house. It’s what you call a place that grows plants, so you can take them home for your own garden and plant them.”

Robin watches as Roland’s brow furrows, his gaze straying to what’s left of the garden. “They’re not from seeds?” he wonders.

“Well, some of them are,” Regina tells him. “Or from bulbs. But some of them, you can buy already grown out of little pots, and then you replant them here, so they can grow for a while at your own house.”

“Oh,” Roland says, understanding smoothing his brow, lessening his pout. “So we could get new flowers that aren’t hurt?”

“We could,” she confirms with a little nod. “Would you like to go with me to pick some out?”

Roland nods eagerly for a moment, then seems to catch himself, and stops to ask, “Will Henry go, too?”

Regina’s shoulders lift and fall. “Maybe. I know right now he’s inside working on another level of Mickey, so he might want to stay home. But we can ask him.” 

Roland’s eyes had widened excitedly at the mention of Epic Mickey, and Robin isn’t terribly surprised when he bounces a little and asks, “Can I go watch him play Mickey?”

Regina smirks, and nods, straightening back up and telling Roland, “Of course you can.” He’s off like a shot, bounding toward the steps before Regina can finish telling him to, “Leave your shoes by the door, though – they’re dirty!”

Roland calls back, “Uh huh!” and then he’s opening the front door and letting it shut behind him with a bang, leaving Robin and Regina alone with her ruined garden and vandalized brickwork.

“What do you think the odds are that I’m going to walk inside to a trail of dirty sneaker prints?” Regina muses, but she’s smiling, just a little, and doesn’t sound all that put-out.

“I think he knows better than to disobey you,” Robin answers, reaching out and weaving his fingers with hers – he needs to touch her, but he doesn’t know how far she’s willing to let him go out here in the open. He gives her a little squeeze and teases, “Now if _I_ had told him to take his shoes off, that might have been another story.”

Regina chuckles, rubs her thumb over Robin’s and tells him, “I’m not sure I want to be the person who strikes fear into children.” She jerks her head toward the porch and mutters, “Case in point.”

Right.

He gives her a little tug, and she steps in closer, lets him draw her right up against him until he can wrap his arms loosely around her the way he wants to. Her arms wind around his waist and hold there, her nose pressing against his shoulder, and Robin feels her chest fill and empty with a deep, heavy breath.

“Not fear,” he assures, rubbing a hand up and down her spine, while his other arm stays firmly spanning her shoulder blades. “Just respect. He knows you mean business.”

Her shoulders jerk a little, a silent laugh, and she mutters against his t-shirt, “And you’re a pushover?”

“Mmhmm,” Robin admits, unable to resist the urge to press his cheek to her temple, damning that ball cap that keeps him from being able to easily steal a kiss. “But I’m working on it.”

Her shoulders shift again, another soft chuckle, and then she’s sighing again, her nose pressing more firmly against him, her arms winding tighter around his middle. Robin reaches up and steals that ball cap, tucking it into his back pocket and then weaving his fingers through her hair, mussing up the sweaty locks and then scratching at her nape.

He’s learned by now what it looks like, feels like, when she needs to hug it out for a bit, and this definitely seems to be one of those moments. And he wants to be able to play with her hair the way she likes (the way _he_ likes too), or tip her head up and be able to look her properly in the eyes without risking getting whacked in the face by the bill of the cap.

Regina doesn’t seem to mind.

She turns her face toward him, her cheek against his shoulder now, her breath tickling along his neck before she murmurs, “I’m really trying not to be too upset about this. They’re only flowers, it’s…” Another rush of breath against his neck, and then her voice begins to waver as she tells him, “It’s not worth crying over. But I am _this close_.”

Robin’s lips find her hair, her brow, one of his palms making soothing passes up and down her back.

She keeps talking, and he lets her get it all out, lets her go on uninterrupted, her voice winding tighter as she says, “I was finally having a good morning, you know? And then I came out here to work in my garden, and… And I know it’s just a garden, it doesn’t matter, it’s not…” She shakes her head, and sniffles softly, and Robin wants to punch something (someone). “It doesn’t matter; I'm being stupid.”

She stiffens after she says it, presses a little harder against him and he hears a telltale _snap!_ from somewhere near his hips.

The rubber band, he realizes, and the impulse to press a kiss to her brow is automatic and impossible to restrain. But he keeps his promise and doesn’t say a word about it.

Instead he soothes, “It matters to you,” the hand in her hair urging her head back enough to meet his gaze. Her lashes are damp; his heart aches. His fingers comb through her hair again, scratching again at her nape as he says, “You’ve put time into it, and love, and care. And maybe they’re only flowers, but they’re yours, and the graffiti is cruel and hurtful.” Her chin wobbles, and she nods as he assures, “You get to shed a tear over it.”

And then her gaze drops down near his chin, her voice a wet whisper that hits him right in the gut as she says, defeated, “I just wanted a good day.”

“It’s not too late for one,” he promises, desperate now to save her day. To make it a good one, a great one. To make certain she doesn’t spend another bloody day in misery after so many already. “We’ll go to the greenhouse, we’ll get you some new flowers to plant. Make your garden lovely again. And then we’ll all have dinner together – I’ll cook. Burgers or something.”

“You made dinner last night,” she protests, as if that matters in the slightest.

“I am capable of making two meals in a row, believe it or not,” he teases her, giving the back of her head a little waggle in an attempt to draw out a smirk at the very least. It almost works, one corner of her mouth lifting ever so slightly and then falling again before he urges, “Regina, let me help. I’m shit at a lot of things, but I can cook a few burgers. Let yourself _relax_ for a weekend.”

She chews her lip, and sighs, her fingertips pressing gently against his back for a moment. And then she seems to relent a little, or at least admit, “It _has_ been a long week. I may have been… _gently chided_ by my therapist once or twice for not taking proper care of my mental health – but it was one thing after another, and who has the _time_ for self-care?”

“Well, you have time now,” he reminds. “What are you supposed to be doing?”

“Things that make me happy – that make me feel good,” she answers, “And allowing help when I need it. I just… hate needing it. I’m not a person who _needs_ help. I do for myself, and my son, and I’m capable and strong and—”

“You’re still all of those things,” he interrupts, “even if you’re struggling, and even if you let someone help you.” She scowls a little at that, but Robin keeps going. “I didn’t _need_ you to hire me to teach Henry. I had the bar, I was making a paycheck. I’d have gotten square with Marian eventually — and I didn’t need the guitar you bought me, or the free meals. But they helped, a lot. I was struggling, I felt like shit about myself, and my life, and there you were, offering help, being a friend, giving me something to do that made me feel worth something. And I didn’t always like accepting it, it didn’t always make me feel like a capable, successful adult in the moment – but those things made me feel more like myself. They made me feel…”

He tries to think of the right words, but can’t quite manage to pluck the one that feels the way he’d felt back then. The way it feels now, in retrospect.

Eventually, he settles on, “I felt like a failure, and you made me feel like a man again. Not a perfect one, not always a great one, I don’t think, but enough of one. And that only happened because I felt like shit, and let someone help me anyway.” Her eyes are damp again, her lips pressed tightly together; he doesn’t miss the way she swallows thickly. “I don’t know what it’s like to live with the kind of anxiety you’re struggling through, but I know what it’s like to feel upended. And I know I only got through it because I let you help me.” 

His hand shifts from her hair down to cradle her jaw, his thumb rubbing back and forth across her cheek, and he tells her, “So, _please_ , love, lean on me. It will not make you weak, or incapable, or silly, or any other thing you think it will. Whatever you need to get through this, I will give it gladly. That’s the whole point of our new arrangement, yeah?”

“Yes,” she admits quietly, brushing at a tear that’s managed to slip out. “But I don’t…” She heaves a sigh, and tells him “I don’t want to be coddled. I want to feel _normal_ ; I want to feel like myself again. I _want_ to take care of myself, and my son, and my home – and I woke up today, and I thought finally I was going to _do_ that. To have a normal Saturday, and now this—”

She throws a hand out in the direction of the garden, her temper spiking again, a little flash of frustrated fire in her eyes.

“I feel like I can’t win, Robin,” she tells him, anger settling in to dry her tears. He lets his hold on her loosen just a little, shifts his hand to her hip and lets her have room to vent. “We finally get to a place that seems workable, I come home to you guys having done everything you did, we have a good, relaxing night. And I get up the next day, and it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, did you think you were going to get a break, Regina? Did you think you could have a day where it didn’t feel like the world was throwing mud at you just for spite? Did you think you could go _one day_ without feeling like someone out there thinks you’re their punching bag? We can’t have that. So here, let’s just destroy something that brings you happiness, and call you a bitch while we’re at it.’ And I’m just so _pissed off_ about it; it’s unfair, I don’t know what the hell I did to deserve any of this.”

She doesn’t, and he should tell her that, but he’s too distracted by the sudden shift in her mood.

She’s tense beside him, every word bitten off and spat between them, and Robin is thrilled to bits. Maybe he shouldn’t be, but this—her anger—he’ll take it any day over the desolate sadness and desperation she’s been swimming in all week. Let her be angry – she ought to be. Let it burn away all the muck that’s weighing her down and help her find a little of that clarity she’s so desperately seeking.

In fact, “Keep going.” 

Regina frowns, and says, “What?” 

She’d lost steam for a second, had heaved a frustrated sigh and raked a hand through her hair, and petered out. And they can’t have that.

So he asks, “What else are you mad about?” and urges, “Tell me. All of it. It helped the other night, yeah? Just letting me have it, being honest about how you were feeling?”

“It did…” she admits, brow still furrowed. 

“So. Let’s have it,” Robin shrugs, backing up a step and opening his arms in invitation. “You’re pissed, you’re frustrated, you’ve talked to your therapist about it, you’ve stressed over it, you’ve cried over it. Now bitch to me about it. Just vent it all. Keep going. Let it all out. Tell me everything that’s driving you mad right now.”

For a second she just looks at him – and then she unloads.

“I worked really hard on that garden; I _tended_ it, it’s something beautiful that makes me happy, and now it’s ruined, and I am furious. And I know I can replant it, and we will, but unless I rip everything up from the root, it’s still going to look like crap. And I don’t want to rip everything up, some of these are annuals. So no matter what I do, every time I look at the front of my house until everything dies for the winter, I’m going to be reminded that someone did this, and that pisses me off.”

“Good,” Robin nods. “What else?”

“Sidney’s being an ass,” she growls, and Robin settles a hand back on her hip and gives it a squeeze – he doesn’t want to interrupt, wants to let her vent as she sees fit, but he really, really fucking hates that man and it’s all he can do to keep his mouth shut about it as she tells him, “I should never have gone out with him, I know that, but you know what? I gave him the chance he’s wanted for _years_ , and he blew it.” 

And thank God for that, as far as Robin is concerned. Thank God for it, because if things had gone another way, he wouldn’t be able to stand here with her like this, rubbing his thumb back and forth along her hip as she continues to vent her frustration.

“I was bored, we had no chemistry, and kissing him was like kissing every overeager frat boy I wasted time with in college,” she bites, and Robin decides to hate _those_ wankers too for good measure. “It’s not _my fault_ that we don’t work, and I am pissed that he’s being such a petulant manchild about it, and I am even more pissed that a _month_ of polite rejections got me nowhere, and I had to be so blunt about it. Because now he’s being a jerk – forgetting to invite me to meetings, and taking credit for ideas we came up with together, and somehow _miraculously_ leaving with the last cup of coffee in the pot _every time_ I show up to refill – and of course he knows when I take my coffee breaks because _he is obsessed with me_. And I am absolutely certain that he’s talked to Leo about all of this, because _he’s_ also been cold this week—and _that_ pisses me off, too!” 

Robin is torn between the urge to hunt Sidney down and give him a good walloping for putting her through this and the urge to grin at her. Because clearly she needs this, it’s tumbling out of her now like water over a cliff, word after rushing word, building and building with each new thing she finds to be irritated about. He wonders just what else she’s been pressing down over the last few weeks, and has a feeling he’s about to find out.

He’s not surprised that she continues with, “I have known Leo Blanchard for decades, and I can’t believe—I _cannot believe_ —that with how long he’s known me, known my family, that I would go to him for help and he’d just tell me to deal with it myself. That he would tell me I brought it on myself – which I know I did, but that is not the _point_. We’ve never been close, but I can’t believe he’s suddenly such an asshole that when an employee—a daughter of a friend and business associate—comes to him because she’s being sexually harassed in his workplace—and that’s what it is, by the way. It’s harassment. I’ve asked him to stop, to leave me alone, to let it go, and he _won’t_. And I shouldn’t have to put up with that just to do my job – some guy who can’t take no for an answer all of a sudden.” 

“No, you shouldn’t,” Robin agrees in the moment she pauses for air.

Her cheeks have gone pink and flushed, her breath quickening, and Robin has to bite at the inside of his lip to hide how pleased he is with it. She’s vibrant, energized, focused. She doesn’t look like she’s crawling out of her own skin, or trapped in her own head. She’s wearing her skin like it belongs there, filling it up with all her righteous fury, and it’s such a comfort to see her with all that spit and fire again that he can’t even muster up the energy to be angry on her behalf just yet (but he will, oh he will, because how dare she just be left out to dry like this when she legitimately needs help – no wonder she’s so bloody resistant to ask for it when this is the result).

Instead, he basks in the way she vents, “But I do! I do have to put up with it. _That_ was his advice — deal with it. And not just deal with it, but find some way to deal with it that doesn’t affect our working relationship, but _how the hell was I supposed to do that when Sidney couldn’t hear no the first fifteen times I tried to say it?_ ”

Her hands fly up into her hair, fisting in her curls as she lets out this noise of frustration that actually does make him grin – that, and the smudge of dirt that ends up on her temple, a reminder of what’s gotten her to this breaking point in the first place. Thankfully, he manages to squash the smile down to something less obvious, clamping his bottom lip in his teeth while she’s still gathering up some more ire to fling about.

Her chest rises and falls, her arms dropping with it, and she swings her gaze back to his face, and pauses. Her eyes narrow and she asks him, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Robin releases his lip and asks, “Like what?”

“Like you want to take a bite out of me,” she says, and he can’t tell if her irritation is lingering from the talk of her workplace woes or in reaction to the expression he apparently _hadn’t_ quite managed to shove away. “I’m sweaty, and angry, and I probably have terrible hat hair and you’re biting your lip that way you do and giving me bedroom eyes.”

“Oh,” Robin admits, caught. It might be smarter to lie, but he’d promised her he wouldn’t, hadn’t he? So he shrugs, and admits, “You’re very attractive when you’re angry at people who aren’t me.”

Her glare sharpens, her head tilting slightly, and she asks him slowly, “You think my anger is sexy?”

“I think your everything is sexy,” he tells her, stepping carefully around each word. “But it’s your word this time, not mine. I said ‘attractive.’ I am… attracted to you… in this moment…” His hand is still at her hip, and he settles the other there now as well, gives her a little squeeze as he chooses his words with the utmost care. “...where you are unabashedly yourself. Honest. Passionate.” 

One brow arches slowly. “Nice save.”

He tries very hard not to smirk at her, and fails quite spectacularly, pressing his luck by adding, “And flushed, and a bit sweaty, and tousled.” Regina rolls her eyes, but she’s trying to scowl down a smile now too. “But you were unloading, and I think you need it right now, so please continue.” 

Regina nods, settling her hands on his arms; he keeps his anchored to her hips, squeezing absently as she works herself up into a good vent again: “I know that dating Sidney was a mistake, I know that was _my_ bad decision, but not being able to end it without just flat-out telling him he never had a chance wasn’t on me. I _tried_ to be polite about it, I tried to let him down gently, but the only thing that _worked_ was finally telling him I never wanted to date him, that I never would, no matter how many gifts he— _Will you stop flirting with me?_ You wanted me to vent, and I’m venting, and it’s helping. But I don’t need you standing there looking at me like I’m being cute; I’m trying to _talk_ to you.”

She’d caught _that_ grin, clearly. The one that came at the thought of her being bluntly honest with that wanker about just how beneath her he actually is.

“Sorry,” he grimaces through his smile. “I’m not flirting; I promise. And I _am_ listening. It’s just that the thought of you letting him have it tickles me. I would pay good money to have been a fly on that wall while you ripped that wanker to shreds and told him about all the things he could never have with you.” 

“Don’t be smug,” Regina tells him tartly. “It’s not _attractive_.”

Robin scoffs slightly, amused at her little turn of the tables there, and tells her, “I’m not being smug, babe. I just hate him.”

“Yeah, y’know what?” She huffs, seeming to accept his words as truth. “Me too. And I didn’t before. I used to feel bad for him. I used to like him, enough. He was a work friend, he was kind. I knew he had feelings for me, and yes, okay, he did occasionally make me… uncomfortable. But I didn’t _dislike_ him. Now, I hope he chokes.”

Robin laughs. He can’t help it, not with her biting off something that bloody brilliant, her teeth flashing white, her nose scrunching in irritation. God, she’s delightful.

And she cracks a smile then, too – apparently that one he was allowed to laugh at.

Regina shakes her head a little, crossing her arms over her chest, that smile lingering as she says, “I do. He’s undermining me at work, I know he is. And I have worked too hard at this job to have some asshole try to ruin it because I wouldn’t _date_ him. I hate him.”

“Can I punch him in the face for you?” Robin asks, doubting she’ll say yes, but hoping very much that she’ll surprise him. “I know you’ve said no before, but I’d really like to. Very much.”

It makes her laugh, at least, has her shaking her head again, and smiling, and telling him, “Thank you, but my answer to that is still no. Things are already bad enough at the office right now. Leo’s unhappy, and Kathryn is _leaving_ – and I’m pissed about that, too. I know we’ve both been wrapped up in our own thing the last few months, but we’ve been friends for years, and now she’s leaving. And I know D.C. isn’t at all far away, but it’s enough that you have to make a point to see each other, and we work in the same office and have barely done that in weeks. And Sidney’s being Sidney, and Leo is disappointed in me, and half the people in that office I can’t stand or just don’t care about. So now it’s just, what? Me and Mal? I go into work every day with _one_ person who isn’t getting on my nerves? I don’t want that.”

She frowns, and he worries that she’s about to lose her fire again, but then her mouth quirks up a little on one side, and she concedes, “But if I’m stuck with only one person I’m friendly with, at least it’s the one who keeps a flask in her desk.”

Robin snorts, and says, “Silver linings. I’d imagine that makes everyone else a bit more tolerable.” 

“A bit,” she agrees with a smirk, and Robin prompts her again, asks who else she’s mad at. She scowls, her arms tucking tighter across her chest, shoulders hunching a little as she admits, “My dad. He should have left Mother. He should have taken me and left her. I would have defended him if she’d tried to ruin him; he should have defended me. I’m his _daughter_ , he should have fought tooth and nail for me, and he didn’t. He never has. He’s a coward.

“And I’m mad at myself, because I’m mad at him. Because being mad at him makes me feel guilty — like I don’t have a right to that kind of anger when he stayed with her because he was afraid I’d get stuck with her and she’d destroy me. He thought he was doing the right thing, I know that. He thought he _was_ protecting me, but all he did was let her hurt me, for years, and then apologize like that made it all better. It didn’t make it better. He should have been better, they _both_ should have been.

“And he should have told me sooner about what she did. I should have known. I’m angry that I spent so long thinking I was such a terrible burden on their marriage, that my illness was what destroyed our home, even if it was her fault I was sick. I felt like I destroyed everything I touched, like I had poisoned everything beyond repair, like maybe they could have been happy if I was just stronger or… not there. But it wasn’t me. It was her. I should have known that, I should have gotten to know that. I should have known how she _used me_ , and I should have been able to decide if I wanted her in my life based on that.

“And you know what else I’m mad about?”

“What?”

“I’m mad—I am _so_ angry—that I’m going to let her back in anyway. Not now, not any time soon, not… I don’t want to. I don’t ever want to see her again, but I always break eventually. And this is worse than anything she’s ever done, so maybe this time it’ll stick, but… I don’t know how that works—being close to my dad, but never seeing her.  He should just leave. I’m mad that he won’t just leave, that he hasn’t just left. That he puts up with her. _Fuck_ her, he deserves better. He should divorce her. I’m mad he didn’t do it twenty years ago, and I’m mad he’s not doing it now. I mean, God, if he’d divorced her twenty years ago, maybe he’d have met someone else, and I could at least have a _step_ mother that wasn’t a monster.”

“What else?”

“I’m mad about how many times I’ve cried this week. I hate that. I’m mad that I feel like everything is out of control, I’m mad that I’m back in weekly therapy, I’m mad that my anxiety is the worst it’s been since _my fiancé died_. I’m really mad about that, Robin, because _why?_ I look at all these things in my life and I feel like none of them are insurmountable, but they all still feel like they are.”

“It’s a lot all at once. I think it’s the pile-on that’s causing you so much grief.”

“Yes. And I know that, I _do_ , but I still hate it. I can handle each of these things, so why does it feel like I can’t handle _all_ of them?”

“You can,” he tells her simply. “You are.”

“Not without help.”

“Nobody goes through life without help, Regina. And even without the help, I know you. You’d be pushing through. You’d be even more miserable, maybe, but you’d be doing it. You’d find a way.”

“I suppose so...”

“Any more mad left in there?”

She takes a deep breath, plants her hands on her hips, and takes stock. He watches her face, the slight squint of her eyes, the purse of her lips as she determines whether or not she has anything else to add to her purge.

In the end, she says, “There’s not enough time in the world for everything about my mother that makes me angry. And I’m—wait. No. Yes. I do have something.”

Robin smirks, nods. 

“I’m mad that Daniel’s brother is coming to take my son for the weekend. I was going to say I’m mad that Daniel is dead, and I am. I’ve gone through all the stages of grief, I’ve accepted it, but I’m still mad. And I’m mad that Liam asked for this, because I know it’s the right thing to do, I know it’ll be good for Henry, but it makes me nervous, sending him away for a night. Especially since it’s something it doesn’t seem like Henry wants to do – I hate forcing him. It makes me feel like… Mother.”

“You’re nothing like your mother,” he assures her, his hands finding their way into her hair, combing over her temples and then weaving at the back of her head and cupping her in close so he can kiss her brow. “I promise you, babe, you are _nothing_ like her.”

“Do you know how many forced social functions I went to as a child? Most of them at that stupid country club. Having to play nice with a bunch of boring, snobby rich people, and never living up to what Mother expected of me, I…” She takes a deep breath, sighs, and then says, “I don’t want him to feel like he’s letting me down if he doesn’t have a good time. Or like I don’t care about his feelings, or what he wants.”

“Henry knows you love him, no matter what,” Robin assures her, hands sliding down to loop around her waist now, holding her against him and feeling the heat of her sun-warmed skin seep through the front of his t-shirt.

“I know he knows I love him, but loving someone and respecting what they want are two different things,” she argues. “He doesn’t want to go, I think that much is clear.”

“Maybe not, but I bet he doesn't always want to go to school in the morning, or to… the dentist, or…  wherever,” Robin points out, wishing he’d had better examples at the front of his brain. “You make him do those things because they’re necessary. You want him to have this bonding time with his uncle, it’s important to you, yeah?”

“It would have been important to Daniel,” she sighs, her fingers fisting and loosening in his shirt lazily. 

“Same thing,” Robin reasons. “It’s important, so he’ll do it. This isn’t some stuffy social function, it’s family – family who must genuinely care about him, or I know you wouldn’t be allowing it.”

“He does care about Henry,” she says wearily, and Robin laments the loss of that fire she’d gotten good and stoked. “I know he does. And I’m hoping that if they spend a little more time together, something substantial, maybe it can… be a foundation for… something?”

She chews her lip, shakes her head, and Robin can see how conflicted she is about all of it. But whatever it is, her wanting Henry to spend time with his family certainly isn’t cruel torture, so he reassures her, telling her, “Then this is one of those times where you get to play the Mom card, and he just has to deal with it. You’re not wrong here.”

Regina scoffs bitterly and mutters, “Tell that to my son and his smart mouth.” Her frown deepens as she tells him, “That’s another thing I’m mad about—what Henry said last night about Daniel—and frankly, I’m mad that you handled it and not me. It should have been me, I’m his mother; I should be the one to parent him.”

“You are.” 

“But I wasn’t. I just... sat there. Stunned. While the guy I’m kind-of seeing lectured my son, and… I’m grateful for how you handled it—honestly I think he’d probably take it better coming from you than me, anyway – he looks up to you, so much. But I’m angry that I couldn’t do it myself. I’m angry that I didn’t insist on it, and I’m really angry that I didn’t insist on it because I was so hungry to have someone finally _defend_ me when someone was thoughtlessly hurtful. But my Mommy and Daddy issues aren’t your problem; you shouldn’t have had to handle it, I sh—”

“You shouldn’t have had to, either,” Robin interrupts.

“Yes, I should have,” Regina insists, to his utter lack of surprise. “He’s _my_ son. Whatever else I’m going through, he is my son and I am his mother, and if I can’t parent him, then what the hell am I good for? Not much.”

He reaches back behind him then – shouldn’t, but does – drawing her arm back around front and holding it up between them, the rubber band on her wrist plainly visible. And then he just tells her, “Snap it.”

Her eyes flash, her jaw clenches, and he pushes, tells her, “You’re a good mother, a wonderful mother – but you are also so much more than that, Regina. You are good for so much more. Don’t beat yourself up for one moment where you were _human,_ and needed a second to recover from your son throwing his dead father in your face.”

“You promised not to make a big deal about the rubber band,” she mutters quietly, darkly, and yes, okay, this may have been a misstep.

Robin rubs his thumb up and down her wrist once, and gentles his voice to tell her, “I know I did, but I can’t bear you thinking that all you’re good for is how you raise him, and that you’re failing at it. It’s not true, and it’s not fair to you, and didn’t you say that this is for when you beat yourself up like you’re doing now?”

Regina twists her wrist out of his grasp, pressing forward against him again, banding her arms around his middle. A hug isn’t quite the reaction he was expecting for his ill-advised overstepping, but he closes her in his arms anyway, giving her a little squeeze – and then he hears the snap, feels her press her nose into his collarbone, and he realizes she’s hiding. Embarrassed. He’s embarrassed her, and fuck. _Fuck_.

“I’m sorry, love,” he murmurs, lifting a hand to comb his fingers through her hair. “I didn’t mean to… upset you. But I hate the idea of anyone putting you down – even you.”

“You were right,” she mutters into his skin after a moment. “It was self-critical. I just... can't believe he said that the way he did. And you were right last night – he knew it would hurt when he said it. He knows how much I love his father.”

“He was being a petulant little jerk,” Robin soothes, fingers weaving along her scalp again.

“I want to say I don't know where he learned to cut at my soft parts, but I do. My fucking mother,” she bites. “He's been watching her do it his whole life.” 

“He's also an eleven year old boy,” Robin reminds, rubbing his hand up and down her spine again. “He's starting to test his boundaries, figuring out what he can get away with. I was a right git when I was a teenager, as hard as that may be to believe.”

He’d meant it to be teasing, and it works. She snorts a laugh into his neck and mutters, “Shocking,” and then, “And don’t use the word ‘teenager’ in the same conversation as my son. He’s growing up too fast – as far as I’m concerned he’ll be eleven forever.”

“Duly noted,” Robin grins, getting back to his point and telling her, “My father didn’t know how to handle my eleven-forever years—” He feels her laugh into his neck again and it thrills him. “—and there wasn’t anybody else around to step in and tell me when I was being a little shit. Nobody ever stopped me, so I didn’t get any better. I skived off school, and fell in with a not-so-great crowd, and learned many valuable life skills, like lockpicking, and window-breaking, and how to sneak spliffs and matches into school without getting caught. But Henry has you, and when you’re overwhelmed, he has me. He'll learn where the lines are soon enough, and I’m sure by the time you’re ready for him to stop being eleven again, he’ll still be a great kid.”

“Mm, and if he’s not, at least I can still have hope that one day he’ll grow up to be a sensitive-but-troubled man who seduces lonely neighbors and sweet talks his way out of the consequences of petty larceny,” she teases, lifting her head and grinning at him.

Robin scoffs, his hands sliding down to squeeze at her hips. “I seem to recall I was the seducee, not the seducer, and there were plenty of consequences.”

Regina shrugs a little, smirking at him so enticingly that he can’t help lean in to steal a proper kiss from those tempting lips. He’s a breath away when she suddenly seems to realize that they're all wrapped around each other in view of the whole neighborhood, and she steps back, leaving him hanging as she lets go of him and says, “We shouldn't be all over each other like this in the front lawn. Someone might— _Henry_ might see, and I don't know how I'd explain that.”

Robin points to the mess of foliage beside them and says, “Your garden got beat to shit. I don't think you need to do much more explaining than that for why Mom might need a good, long hug.”

“A hug, maybe, but I’m pretty sure hugging doesn’t involve lips,” she tells him pointedly. 

She’s still smiling just a little, though, so Robin takes his chances and wiggles his brows a little, teasing her, “It does the way I do it.”

Regina laughs, shaking her head and tucking her hands into her back pockets as she tells him, “I just don't want him to get his hopes up about this.”

“You don’t want him to think we might start kissing each other, and sleeping together, and—?”

“Okay, alright,” she concedes, because it’s a bit silly to act like Henry has the wrong idea about them, at this point, isn’t it?

“I don’t want…” Regina takes a deep breath, and tries again: “Whatever happens between us, it’s ours. I don't want him in the middle of it yet. I want to keep it to myself for a while, especially while we're still figuring it all out.”

Robin can’t begrudge her that, he supposes, so he nods, reaching back to retrieve her cap from his pocket and pass it back to her.

“Got it,” he tells her. “No snogging in front of the children.”

Regina rolls her eyes, raking her hair back with one hand before fitting the cap back in place with the other.

“But maybe we could find some time alone later?” he suggests cheekily, because hell, it’s worth a shot, isn’t it? “You know, in the interest of relaxation, and doing things that feel good.”

Those dark eyes narrow slightly, her lips pursing in a sad attempt to hide a smirk. And then she breaks into a smile, and ducks her head slightly, telling him, “Maybe. We’ll see how the night goes. But for now…” Regina takes a deep breath and looks to her ransacked garden. “I’m going to finish cleaning this up, and then see if I can wrangle either of our boys to help me pick out replacements.”

“You do that,” Robin tells her, “and I’ll go make that call for you.”

Her lips curve again, softly, and she reaches out a hand for his, giving it a squeeze.

“Thank you,” she tells him. “Loath as I am to admit I need help… I have lately. And you’ve been there, always. So thank you.”

“Anytime, babe,” Robin assures her, squeezing her fingers in turn even though he’d very much rather press a kiss to her cheek. Or her lips.

But she’s asked him not to, here, out in the open, so he doesn’t give in to his baser urges.

Instead, he leaves her there with her bent flowers and heads home to scrounge up a power washer.

 

**.::.**

 

Regina finishes clearing the casualties from her gutted garden, then finally heads inside for that shower. It’s sorely needed now; she smells like sweat and dirt, and what on earth was she thinking wrapping herself up around Robin in this state?

She reminds herself that he hadn’t minded, and spends a few minutes under the hot spray, letting it wash away the evidence of her morning.

She’s tired, again.

The energizing calm of this morning had been sapped completely by the sight of her ruined garden. She’d looked up and down the street like an idiot after she’d noticed it, half-expecting to see… someone. Expecting the person who did it (she’s trying not to make an assumption, the M.O. doesn’t fit, it _doesn’t_ , she’s just being paranoid) to still be standing there waiting for a reaction to their handiwork. But the street had been tranquil as always, nothing else amiss, so she’d shaken off the unease and reminded herself that she wasn’t the first victim of this petty vandalization, and likely wouldn’t be the last.

Still, it’s unsettling. She’d attempted to keep her gaze from the dripping black paint slurred across her porch, but try as she might, it had slid back again and again while she’d plucked half-bent and fully bruised flowers from the dirt. Every time she’d caught sight of it, her stomach had swooped and twisted sharply. 

Robin’s appearance had been a welcome distraction. She’d needed to vent to someone, to really unload – he’d been right about that. And it had been… nice. Having someone there to wrap her up in a hug and rub her back, and… to have that be okay. Acceptable. Not an illicit indulgence, just… part of what they have now. Something she no longer has to feel guilty about.

She’d indulged a little longer than she should have, maybe, but she’s determined to make today a day of actual self-care, or at least one she doesn’t spend twisting herself up in knots.

So she’s not going to feel bad about it, she’s just going to use her deep conditioner, and crank the shower head to the massage setting, letting it beat at her shoulders while her conditioner does its thing.

She emerges quite a while later, fresh as a daisy now, and with her hair blown out, a light coat of makeup on her face. She’d dressed herself in stretchy, comfortable denim, pulled on a snug red tank top that she likes, one that’s flattering and makes her cleavage look great in this bra. Not that she should be worrying about that for a day spent with Robin and the boys, but, well, it’s _Robin_ and the boys, and why shouldn’t she flirt a little? She’s allowed.

They’re… lovers, she supposes, for lack of a better word for them at the moment. And she feels good dressed like this, feels sexy and desirable, and very much not like the woman who’d headed upstairs flecked with dirt and coated in sweat, with unruly corkscrews sticking out from squashed waves when she took her cap off. What Robin had found attractive about that is beyond her.

When she pads barefoot into the den to see what the boys have gotten themselves up to, she discovers that Robin has joined them, and for just a second his mouth drops open in a way that makes her feel incredibly smug.

Looks like he likes the red tank top, too.

“You boys having fun?” she asks Roland and Henry, but her gaze never falters from Robin, so she gets to see the way he sucks in a deep breath and mouths _Beautiful_ , her mouth turning up at the corners helplessly while Henry answers an absent, focused _Yeah_ and Roland rattles on about how Henry beat another whole part of Mickey, and it was _So amazing, Regina!_

“I bet it was,” she tells him, finally moving to perch on the arm of the sofa beside him, letting her fingers rake through his curls.

She’s drawing a breath to ask if he’s decided if he wants to go with her to the greenhouse or stay here with Henry when Robin finally finds his tongue, telling her, “I’ve got the washer for the night, no problem – figured I’d head out to get it when you leave for your errand?”

“Sounds good,” Regina nods, feeling an utterly stupid rush of affection for him – it’s just a power washer. (It’s not – it’s the dark, protective fury she’d seen him suppressing when he assured her he wouldn’t take a cent to restore her dignity.)

She gives Roland’s hair another muss with her fingers and asks, “You going to come with me to get the new flowers, or are you too caught up with Mickey over here?”

“I’m going with Daddy!” he insists, and Regina’s brows rise as Robin sits a little straighter and clears his throat. “We’re going to see uncle Alan!”

“I’m sorry,” Robin grimaces. “I told him I was dropping by Alan’s to pick something up and he hasn’t seen him in ages. He begged to come along – Alan has kittens. Well, cats now, but Roland remembers them as—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Regina assures, putting him out of his misery. “Whatever he wants to do is fine by me. In fact… Henry, do you want to go with?”

She turns her attention to her son, pleased that he manages to tear himself away from his game long enough to answer her. Of course, his answer is, “Huh?”

“Robin’s going to get something to get all that paint off the porch – do you want to go with him and Roland, or to the greenhouse with me?”

Henry loves the greenhouse – loves picking out plants, and seeds, and seeing all the different colorful, growing things. But it doesn’t surprise her at all when he asks, “Can I go with Robin?”

She nods, tells him, “Of course, sweetheart,” and when Robin asks if she’s sure, if she’s alright going alone, she says, “Honestly, yes. I think it’ll be nice to have a little time to myself – and I have no doubt it’ll be faster.”

Robin smirks, and says, “Probably true,” and that’s that.

Within thirty minutes, they’re all out the door, Robin and the boys piled into his car, Regina alone in hers. She takes the opportunity to crank her music up loud, something uptempo and steady in an attempt to lift her mood.  It helps, some, and so does wandering the aisles of the greenhouse and carefully selecting a new array of blooms to hold her over until the first frost.

She likes planning a garden – it’s methodical, but creative, and it’s nice to take some time every now and then to just appreciate beautiful things. To smell sweetness and the earthy green-ness, to appreciate the way colors shift and blend on a petal, the way different combinations of flowers play off each other. 

For all her talk of it being faster to do this without children underfoot, she ends up taking her sweet time meandering amongst the blooms. There’s no rush – they’re not planting them today, having realized that high-velocity water flooding at her garden wasn’t probably the _best_ start for all the new plants. 

She’ll do it tomorrow, while Henry is with her dad.

So tonight, she has time to stop and smell the roses, as it were, and she takes advantage. It’s an hour before she’s back in the car, her trunk lined with a tarp and toting its precious cargo.

And then she goes grocery shopping. All that time meandering the greenhouse had given her plenty of time to think about dinner, and she’d shot Robin a text with a request not to feed the boys or start cooking. She wants to handle it herself, wants to get back to something that feels normal – and what’s more normal than Regina making a home-cooked meal for all of them?

And sure, she has a full fridge, they’d seen to that yesterday, but there’s one thing she’s missing for what she has planned: cheese. Lots of it.

She picks up a round of Brie and some fig jam, some pepper jack, and cheddar, and a package of goat cheese to be on the safe side. She grabs a rotisserie chicken, because as much as she wants to prepare a good meal, she doesn’t want to delay dinner by cooking up chicken breasts when she could just shred this. And she has turkey bacon, but she grabs a package of _proper_ bacon, because she has a point to prove, and she’ll be damned if anyone complains about turkey bacon while she’s making it.

She’s going to show Robin how grilled cheese is really done.

 

**.::.**

 

They spend a little while with Alan and the cats before they head home, and it’s exciting enough that Roland knocks out in his car seat after about five minutes.

And then, it’s just… quiet.

The radio is playing, but for a good several minutes, that’s the only sound in the car. Robin glances over at Henry, and finds him staring out the window, frowning; somehow it’s only then that he realizes the boy has been a little on the sullen side all day long.

Earlier, he’d chalked it up to Henry being engrossed in his game, and then the assumption that as exciting as a trio of mischievous cats are to a preschooler, they’re perhaps less so to a boy of eleven.

But now, as he steals glances at Henry’s vacant stare out the window, Robin thinks maybe it’s something else. That maybe he’s as unnerved by dripping black spray paint as Robin had been, as Regina had been.

And he should probably talk to him about it, he supposes. For all Regina had said this afternoon about how she wants to be the one to parent Henry, she’s had a hard week, and if Robin can take another potentially heavy conversation off her hands, he’ll do it gladly.

He gives Henry until the end of “The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World, and then he says something.

“So… You’re awfully quiet.”

Henry _Hmm?_ s, and Robin gives him another nudge: “Something on your mind?”

His shoulders lift, and then fall, and Robin glances over in time to see him scowling down at his hands, picking at the edge of one of his fingernails.

Robin waits him out, letting him stew for another minute before Henry finally asks, “Why would someone do that to our house?”

“Because they’re bored, and stupid, and it makes them feel powerful and like they’re able to get away with things that others can’t,” Robin answers. “Or at least that’s what it was like when I was doing it.” 

That gets Henry’s attention, has him sitting a little straighter and turning in his seat to ask, “You wrote on people’s houses and stuff?”

“I did,” Robin tells him, because why not? Maybe he can impart some grown-up wisdom on the boy, even as little of it as he has. “When I was young, I was… not a very good kid. And I had some friends who weren’t very good kids either, and we used to do some… not very good stuff. Like spray graffiti on old buildings, and bust people’s windows, and… other things.”

He decides to leave out the breaking and entering, and the thievery. Henry doesn’t need to know _everything._

“What kinds of other things?”

“Nothing you need to worry about.”

Henry squints a little at him – deciding whether to press or not, no doubt. In the end, he just asks, “Why? Just because you were bored?”

“Because I was young, and dumb,” Robin shrugs. “And then I grew up, and realized how stupid it was, and I stopped.” 

That’s not exactly why, but maybe Henry doesn’t need to know the truth of that either.

“They called Mom a b-i-t-c-h,” Henry says sullenly; Robin feels a surge of possessive ire and has to release the little bubble of anger in his chest on a heavy exhale.

“Yeah, they did,” Robin says. “And that was rude of them.” 

“I think it really hurt her feelings.”

“It did,” Robin agrees, thinking how much Regina would _not_ want him to be thinking of it in those terms. “Which is why we’re going out of our way to get it off the brick tonight – so she doesn’t have to see it anymore and be hurt about it.”

“Why would they call her that, though? Like, who are they? What did she ever do to them?”

“Probably nothing,” Robin assures him. “It’s been happening all summer, yeah? It wasn’t about your mum or anything she did. She just had the unfortunate bad luck to be their next target.”

They pull up to a red light, and for a second Henry is quiet again. And then he grumbles, “I’m really mad at them. They’re jerks, and I hope they get in trouble. Even if we can’t catch them, I hope they do some other dumb thing and get in trouble for it.”

“They probably will,” Robin tells him, adding, “Thankfully, chances are, it won’t be to us. Or, to your mum, rather. I guess she’s not really an ‘us’, is she?” 

It’s only that he’s gotten so used to thinking of her as his, even when he shouldn't have. Of Henry and Roland as theirs, in a way, even though they’re not. Not really.

But she wants to keep their relationship away from Henry for a while, so he’ll play ball, he’ll amend the words that come so naturally to him.

He needn’t bother, it turns out. Henry looks back at him with a funny sort of expression on his face, and says, “Yeah, she is. You're family even if you’re not with my mom. Even if she doesn’t say so, I do.”

Robin grins, his heart feeling rather more warm and fuzzy than he’d like to admit, and says, “I’m glad to hear it.”

 

**.::.**

 

By the time Regina starts making dinner, she’s ready to concede that Robin was right — despite its rough beginning, her Saturday was salvageable. She’d been convinced it wasn’t, that all her effort towards a good day would end up being for naught (because that’s par for the course lately, isn’t it?), but the day is coming to a close and she’s ready to admit that things feel right. Normal, even. 

It doesn’t feel like the world is pressing down on her here, in the kitchen, slicing cheese and buttering bread while the boys are out front stripping the graffiti from her porch and giving the whole front of the house a little refresh while they’re at it. She doesn't envy them – the day has gotten muggy. Even now as she preps dinner, it’s warmer than it was this morning, and the air is sticky and hot. She’d taken pity on her men and brought them Cokes about half an hour ago, emerging onto the porch to find them all standing shirtless in the lingering daylight of early evening.

The boys had been adorable, flanking Robin and looking like they were up to some serious business, Roland pointing out, “Daddy, there's still black stuff there; better get it.”

Robin had been gripping the washer, his biceps flexing slightly as he’d shifted it, sweat slicking his skin from weather and effort. It had made Regina _feel things._ Had made her itch to run her palms over his arms and feel the warmth of his skin slide beneath her touch. Had made her wish he was sweaty for other, more pleasant reasons; had made her want to work up a sweat _with_ him.

They weren’t at all appropriate feelings to be having in front of his son, or hers, so she’d made some joke about wilting in the heat and retreated back inside to her kitchen.

And here she is, laying out ingredients to prove some kind of point to him about who makes the better grilled cheese.

The thought makes her smile – and the fact that it does is a realization that brings her some measure of joy in itself. That she can be amused at something that has to do with him and not just feel conflicted and guilty. That she can laugh at a challenge that stems from a night she spent hiding at his place, struggling to breathe and then stoned and then pantsless.

She still feels that little lick of shame when she thinks of how utterly unable she’d been to handle herself, but it’s easier to push it down, easier to call up Dr. Hopper’s words of dismissal, easier to lean into the idea that everything really is going to be okay. That it all _was_ okay in the first place.

It’s hard to believe it had been only a week ago – less than, even. She feels like she’s aged a year in a scant six days.

But that’s ridiculous – she’s being overdramatic. It was just a hard week, that’s all. Just a near-breakdown or two, that’s all – but no, she shouldn’t think of it like that. Not break _downs_ , break _throughs._ She’d had a week of breakthroughs, and those don’t come easily. And that’s okay. She’s allowed to struggle. Struggle brings growth, and growth eventually brings peace. Hopefully. In some cases. Or whatever Dr. Hopper likes to tell her.

In this case, at least, it seems to be easing her in that direction. The guilt is fading, the self-loathing is ebbing away.

And now it’s the weekend, and it’s over, and she can get back to life as usual.

She can fry up bacon in a pan, and set it aside, can shred some of that rotisserie chicken and throw it in a pan with chopped bell peppers and spices and set that aside too. Can let that pleasant anticipatory smugness build in her chest as she preps the first round of grilled cheeses, layering cheddar with apple slices and that bacon, and another layer of cheddar, because fuck the calories, and fuck her too-tight jeans, and fuck everything but gooey cheesy goodness tonight. (And she’s not going to eat that one, anyway – she’s saving herself for the last of her concoctions.)

She works in cycles, making one of each flavor so no particular type goes cold waiting for the others to finish, and then she does it all again. She follows the cheddar-bacon-apple with her chicken fajita grilled cheese, layering the spicy chicken and peppers with pepper jack, and then makes her piece de resistance: a melty brie with fig jam. She’d even swung by the bakery case to grab a loaf of the hearty walnut bread she prefers for this particular sandwich – the other two will do just fine on her usual seven grain, but the brie and fig is for her and Robin, and she’s damn well not going to scrimp on proving her point.

When the last brie and fig is melting in the pan, she pokes her head out the front door and announces, “Food’s ready; time to call it a night – and hurry up, you’ll want your dinner while it’s hot.”

“What’re we having?” Henry asks her, making her smile with his, “Ooh!” when she answers that she’s made fancy grilled cheese.

She’s trying very hard not to look at Robin’s bare chest and shoulders gleaming in the slowly shifting light of dusk, but she does manage to catch the way he chuckles softly and grins.

“Why are they fancy?” Roland asks Henry as Regina ducks back inside. She leaves the door open a crack since they’ll be heading in momentarily anyway, so she hears the beginnings of Henry’s explanation – that she _puts all sorts of extra stuff on them, not just cheese, so they’re extra tasty_.

 _Damn right they are_ , she thinks with an amount of self-satisfaction that she might be ashamed of if she wasn’t so determined to feel good about herself today.

And besides, it’s true – or at least, it must be, because even though nine grilled cheese sandwiches are by far enough (too many, in fact) for two adults and two children, they all end up being gobbled down by the time dinner is finished. She’d halved all the sandwiches and piled them into a plate in the middle of the table, so everyone could pick and choose as they wanted, and to her entire lack of surprise, Henry reaches for the chicken fajita first (it’s always been a favorite of his). In fact, he reaches for it before he’s even parked his butt in his chair, and, more importantly, before he’s cleaned up.

Regina clears her throat pointedly and orders, “Wash up first, please,” to him and Roland. “You’ve both been playing in the dirt.”

“Nuh uh, we haven’t,” Roland tells her, holding up his hands and saying, “See, I’m clean.”

And okay, maybe they haven’t been _in the dirt_ exactly, but they’re still about to eat with their hands so, “Wash up anyway, please.” She points to the powder room, and says, “Before you eat.”

Henry sighs dramatically, and so Roland does the same, and they trudge off toward the little bathroom with equally put-upon stompy steps.

Robin passes them on his way in and smirks, giving her a questioning look as he closes the distance between them. He’s pulled his shirt back on, a wise decision she can’t help but be just a teensy bit disappointed by.

“Have they been sent away with no supper?” he teases, and Regina shakes her head, says, _No, just told to wash their hands_. And then he’s even closer, leaning in with a joking, “Well, heaven forfend,” before he steals a smooch from her.

It’s so quick that Regina barely has time to react, over before she can even pull back in protest – which she does, even though he’s already stepping away and taking the smell of sweat and sunscreen and faded cologne with him. She glances toward the powder room and hisses a scolding, “Don’t do that! Not with the boys around.”

He matches her low tone, thankfully, when he whispers back, “They’re in the loo. I can hear the water running. Roland will have to get through the whole handwashing song before he’ll be satisfied; I had time.”

“Be that as it may…” It’s no excuse. So, “Don’t do it again. Not while they could walk back in; I mean it. Please.”

He must be able to see that she means business, because he pauses just before turning on the tap at the sink and gives her a genuine, “Alright; I’m sorry. You just look good enough to eat in that bloody tank top. I’m half convinced you wore it to tempt me.”

She hears the water cut off in the powder room just as Robin turns it on in the kitchen, reaching for the soap as she smirks, and taunts him, “I did.”

The corner of his mouth curves up, and he rakes his gaze over her, all the way down to her bare toes and back up again, but there’s nothing he can say – they have an audience again, the boys clamoring for their seats and sandwiches.

Regina helps them both pour seltzers as she points out, “You’ll notice that Robin washed his hands without being asked _and_ without complaining.” She gives Roland a wink, Henry a pointed glance and adds, “Something the two of you should try in the future.”

Henry just sighs and reaches for that chicken fajita grilled cheese again. Roland does the same, letting out a satisfied, “Mmmmmm,” around his first cheesy mouthful.

“You’ve gone all out,” Robin murmurs to her as he pulls out a chair, a knowing sort of low tone to his voice that shouldn’t be sexy but somehow it is. Because she knows he knows just why she made grilled cheese – and no doubt he’s thinking of last weekend, too. Of her stoned and silly, of her half-naked, of… everything.

She swallows thickly and answers quietly, “I had a point to prove.”

He’s smirking at her again, and asking, “Where should I start, then?”

“This one”—she points to the brie and fig—“is my favorite. You can probably guess which is Henry’s. And this”—she points to the cheddar apple bacon—“is chock full of cheese and bacon. So pick your poison, I guess.”

Much to her pleasure, Robin reaches for the brie and fig. She does the same, then watches as he takes the first bite, the fluttery nerves in her belly making her feel silly and childish. It's just a grilled cheese, she needs to get a grip.

But then he grins and tells her, “This is really good. You win.”

“Win what?” Henry asks, just as Roland insists around a full mouthful, _You should try the chicken, Daddy!”_

“I will after this one,” Robin assures him, before answering Henry, “Just a bet I had with your mum about who could make a better cheese toastie.”

Henry's face twists into a disbelieving scowl, and he looks at Robin like he has two heads as he questions, “You bet you could make something better than _Mom_?”

“Yeah, pretty silly of me, huh?”

“Pretty dumb,” Henry tells him with a grin, and Regina scoffs and gives him a scolding _Henry!_ Roland just giggles around another mouthful.

“He's not wrong,” Robin points out, taking another big bite of his sandwich, and then handing it to Roland when he asks if he can try it too.

“Maybe not, but he could be more polite in his saying so,” Regina tells Robin and Henry.

“It's just Robin,” Henry shrugs.

Regina tells him that's no excuse for rudeness, and then Roland decides, “This cheese tastes funny.”

She smirks, and urges him to, “Try the bacon one next; you’ll like it more. The brie tastes better when you’re a grown up.”

Roland nods, and shoves a ridiculously large bite of his current grilled cheese into his mouth, prompting a warning from Robin not to choke, and one from Regina to chew carefully, and then Henry is asking Robin, “What’d you lose in the bet?” and Regina pauses in her chewing.

It wasn’t really a _bet_ , per se, and they hadn’t established terms, and—

“I owe your mum a proper back rub,” Robin supplies, not missing a beat, and then he gives a defeated sigh and says, “If I’d won, she was going to clean my bathroom to her standard. Now I’ll have to clean it all myself.”

Henry wrinkles his nose and looks to Regina. “You knew you were gonna win, huh?”

She’s not a huge fan of lying to her son, tries not to if she can help it, but she figures this little ruse isn’t hurting anyone. So Regina winks and says, “I wouldn’t have offered to clean his bathroom if I hadn’t.”

The rest of dinner continues much the same. It’s easy, and comfortable. Relaxed. There are no awkward mentions of her dead fiancé, no clamoring feelings of anxiety in her chest, or failure pressing down on her. She even manages to forget entirely about the graffiti on her porch, until Robin leans back in his chair and says, “You know, when I had that last sandwich, I forgot I hadn’t quite finished blasting the front of the house. I wanted to be done before we lost all the daylight.”

Regina squints toward the kitchen window and tells him, “I think you’re a little late.”

“Mm,” he confirms. “I suppose I can finish tomorrow. I’d offer to do the side of the house, too, so it all matches, but I’d need a ladder taller than what I have.”

“It’s alright,” Regina assures. “You’ve done enough.”

“I could talk Alan into coming over – he’s got one,” Robin offers.

“You’ve done enough,” Regina repeats. “If you did any more work, I’d insist on paying, and you wouldn’t want to let me—”

“If we did the whole house, I’d let you,” Robin shrugs, sitting up and reaching for his drink again, pausing before he takes a sip to add, “Well, I’d let you pay Alan, anyway.”

“I’d pay you both,” Regina insists. “Or I would if we were going to do it, but we’re not. It’s your weekend, it’s your time with Roland. Maybe during the week, if he’s not busy and you wouldn’t have to cancel any plans. And besides, my dad is coming over tomorrow to pick up Henry for his riding lesson, so…”

She says it casually enough that she hopes the boys won’t take issue with it, but she can see by the way Robin stiffens that he knows what she meant – it would be very, very bad for him to accidentally cross paths with her father.

Henry, of course, has no idea of that, so naturally he disagrees, perking up and saying, “Hey, maybe Robin can meet Grandpa tomorrow! I bet they’d like each other.”

Robin takes another deep swing of seltzer, not looking anywhere near Henry as Regina says, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?” Henry pouts. “We could show him something on the guitar – something we could play together! Please, Mom, _pleeeeease?_ ”

“Henry, I— No.” It doesn’t take her long to grasp for an reason for her refusal – and thankfully, she doesn’t even have to resort to excuses. When she tells him, “I don’t want your grandpa hanging around tomorrow. He’s going to pick you up, and go, and drop you back when you’re done,” it’s the truth.

Henry’s pout morphs into a confused, curious frown, and he asks, “Are you mad at him?”

“No,” she answers, although that’s not quite so truthful. “Not really. I just… I need a little break from your grandparents, that’s all.”

“I thought you were just mad at Grandma,” he says, and for a second her heart drops into her belly, a panicked _How did he find out?_ scampering through her brain before she remembers her mother's behavior at his birthday brunch a week ago. He must be thinking of that, not the other things, when he asks, “What’d Grandpa do?”

“Nothing,” she tells him. “He didn’t do anything. I just…” Regina sighs, not really wanting to go into all this with him, and certainly not with an audience. So she's says, “It’s complicated. And between me and him. Or me and your grandma, really, but… I need you to trust me on this one. I don’t want to spend time with my parents right now. Okay?”

Henry looks at her, confused but still too knowing, before he nods and relents with a quiet, “Okay.”

For a moment, it’s quiet, and Regina regrets bringing her father up at all. She could have waited, could have reminded Robin privately. Could have avoided the slow sinking feeling in her chest brought on by having to be so vulnerable in front of Henry. Robin’s knee finds hers under the table, pressing against it and staying there. Regina presses back, shifts slightly until her calf is flush to his, their ankles touching.

It’s not much, but it’s something. Enough.

And then Roland pulls a smile from her, breaking the silence with an all-too-innocent and perfectly pleasant, “I don’t have a grandma; she’s in heaven with the angels.”

He says it like he’s sharing a very fun fact, like his grandma just lives very far away, in a pleasant heavenly retirement home.

“I have a ‘buela though; she’s nice. She always gives me candy.” He whispers that last part, too loudly and with mischievous eyes, like he can somehow share it with Regina and hide it from his daddy at the same time.

She chuckles, and tells the little boy, “I bet she does.”

“Does Henry have a ‘buela too?” He asks, turning his head toward the older boy; Henry just shrugs.

“Nope. My dad died before I was born,” he tells Roland, “And his mom and dad died before that.”

“Oh,” Roland says, and then he perks up to ask, “Are they in heaven with Grandma?”

“They are,” Regina tells him with a nod, smiling softly at the idea. Daniel and his parents hanging out with Robin's mother in some heavenly diner or whatever things are like in the afterlife.

Roland seems charmed by the idea too, nodding his satisfaction and then turning a curious gaze to his father. “Granddad's not in heaven, right, Daddy?” he asks, and Regina’s brows creep up slightly.

“No,” Robin tells him. “Just England.”

Roland frowns a little at that, then sighs almost dejectedly and wonders, “When can I go to England?”

“When you're older, I suppose,” is the reply he gets from Robin before Henry scowls and asks the same question that had crossed Regina’s mind:

“He's never gone before?”

Robin lifts his drink to his lips for another sip, and answers a succinct, “Nope.”

Something in the tone of it tells Regina everything she needs to know about why – their previous conversations about his father are still fresh in her mind, after all.

Henry, of course, has no idea that Robin’s relationship with his father is so strained, so he just scowls deeper and asks, “Why not? Doesn't your dad want to meet him?”

Before he can think, Robin’s making a sour face, and biting out, “My dad's a b—” She’s fairly certain that was about to be _“bastard”,_ but thankfully for them all, he catches himself in time to correct it to, “...busy man.”

Henry’s not fooled, though. Regina watches as his eyes narrow a little, his head tilting curiously as he asks, “Too busy for you guys to go visit?”

Regina watches the exchange carefully, unsure if she should step in and put an end to it. But just as she’s about to, Robin clears his throat slightly and says carefully, “My dad's a lot like your grandma; they’d get along very well. And I don’t suppose you’d like to spend a whole vacation with her, would you?” Henry’s eyes widen a little, and he shakes his head; Regina’s heart pinches and aches. “Only unlike your grandma, my dad lives an ocean away, not an hour away, so I don’t have to put up with his… less than enjoyable personality traits very often. Which I find makes me rather less tolerable of them. Your mum puts up with a lot from your grandma so she can see your grandpa, yeah?” Henry nods. “Well, my mum passed away when I was about your age, so I don’t have much of a reason to go home.”

“So he’s never met Roland?” Henry wonders. (Roland answers, “Nope, never,” with an ease and innocence oblivious to the mood around him.)

“Not yet,” Robin says, “And to be honest, my dad’s not great with kids, so it’s probably for the best. We’ll go visit him when Roland’s older, maybe.”

Regina very much doubts that. And she very much doubts Robin still wants to be having this conversation, judging by the way he's focusing more on fiddling with his glass than he is Henry. Usually Henry gets his full attention when they're talking.

So Regina gives him an out, asking the boys, “Are we all ready to clear our plates? We're probably creeping up on bedtime for certain little boys.”

Roland eyes go wide and then he melts into a dismayed near-wail of, “Nooooooo. I don't wanna go to bed, I wanna stay here.”

“It's getting late,” Regina tells him regretfully, something that feels silly to say when it is only barely dark outside, but it's late for a toddler.

Roland doesn't buy it, sulking in his chair and grousing, “Nuh uh,” he pouts, and then, “Why can't we sleep here?”

Robin draws a breath to answer, but Henry beats him to it, popping up straighter with an excited, “You could! Mom, can we have a sleepover?”

Roland lights up immediately, doing his best impression of an overworked bobblehead as he nearly shouts, “Yeah! Yeah, we could! Daddy, _pleeeeeeeeeeease?_ ”

He holds the word so long that Regina worries he might run out of breath, long enough that she and Robin are sharing amused glances and stifled giggles. Robin’s grinning by the time Roland finally gives up the word, and it makes something flutter in Regina’s chest to see him happy, laughing. To see his darkening mood pop back up so quickly.

And then he looks at her, his gaze locking with hers and holding there, nothing out of the ordinary in the way he says, “As long as Regina’s alright with it. If she has plans, or things to get done, I wouldn’t want to bother her.”

But he doesn’t look away for a word of it, not for a second, and there’s something _meaningful_ about the eye contact. Something in the way he’s looking at her that makes her think of his sweaty shoulders in the late daylight, of that way he bites his lip, of that way he nibbles _hers_. Of his hips cradled in her thighs and his hands on her breasts, his kisses against her neck as he muffled quiet grunts there, and it’s entirely inappropriate to be thinking of these things in front of the children, so she looks away from him, clearing her throat softly and saying, “I suppose you can stay the night.”

The boys both cheer, and she glances back to Robin, finds him smirking knowingly at her, the bastard, and then he wiggles his brows slightly and she’s just glad the boys are too distracted and too young to notice her being seduced on the other side of the dinner table.

She rolls her eyes slightly at him, wishing she could suppress the little smile on her lips, and then turns her attention to their sons and asks, “Do you boys want to sleep in Henry's room or make forts down here?”

“Forts!” Roland shouts, popping up in his chair so eagerly he nearly topples it.

“Easy, Roland,” Robin chuckles, reaching out a hand to tug his son’s chair in a little closer to the table, as Henry agrees, _Definitely forts._

He adds, “That way Robin can have somewhere to sleep too.”

Regina is tempted to give _herself_ a dunk in cold water when her immediate thought is _That won’t be a problem_.

Thankfully, she has the good sense not to speak said thought aloud, finding her voice for a much less desperate, “Robin can always sleep in the guest room if the forts are short on space.”

“He won’t need to,” Henry insists. “We can get all the clean sheets out and turn the whole den into one big fort. We can get the flashlights from the emergency drawer, and bring down the pillows and blankets from the guest room, too, and maybe my sleeping bag if we need it. Do we still have my Nemo one from when I was little? I bet it would fit Roland.”

Regina smiles at the memory – her little boy all cocooned in his Finding Nemo sleeping bag. He’d been obsessed with it, had insisted on taking it every time they went to her parents, had slept zipped up into it on the living room floor while she camped out beside him in an old red-checkered Coleman that had once been Daniel’s, whispering and giggling to each other in the dark while his old turtle nightlight painted a kaleidoscope of stars across the ceiling. She’d even borrowed a tent from Kathryn and David, and pitched it in their front lawn, all so that Henry could camp _properly_ in his Nemo bag.

It had reminded her so painfully much of Daniel, of all those times he’d leave her for the weekend to go trekking into the woods with Liam, sleeping bag rolled up and strapped into his hiking backpack. He’d have loved the sight of his son zipped up tight and ready to sleep under the night sky.

The day she’d brought the sleeping bag to Goodwill, she’d sat in the parking lot for a solid ten minutes, fingers fisted in the downy material, tears on her cheeks. It was just a thing, she’d told herself. Just a thing he’d outgrown – he’d gotten too tall, her baby boy, too grown up (he was growing _too fast_ , and that’s all the tears were for, really – it’s not like the memories of sticky marshmallow fingers and soft cheeks smeared with melty chocolate were going to disappear with the bag itself). The Nemo sleeping bag had been languishing in a corner of the closet for too long, so she’d thrown it in the trunk along with a bag of too-short pants, and too-skinny shirts.

It had needed to go.

It had been time.

“It’s in the back of my closet,” she assures Henry with a wistful little grin, “And I bet it would fit Roland perfectly.”

As it turns out, she’s never been very good at letting go of the things that have overstayed their welcome once they get a grip on her heart. Mother would call her a pack rat, a sentimental fool who doesn’t know how to let go.  

But Regina looks at Robin, perfectly comfortable and not the slightest bit out of place as he leans back in one of her kitchen chairs and tells their sons, “That’s settled, then; we’ll get started on building the fortress of Helm’s Den in there just as soon as Roland’s had a bath,” and she can’t help the rising swell of gratitude in her chest for her own weak will.

If she’d been stronger, been better at letting go of the things she no longer needs, she’d have really cut Robin loose when she’d meant to all those weeks ago, and then she wouldn’t have this. Family meals, and blanket forts, and subtle flirtation that flies right over young heads.

Maybe a little sentimentality is a good thing.

 

**.::.**

 

Roland’s slight reluctance to leave them all for a bath had been easily conquered by Regina telling him there was a little robot man in a bin under the sink that would turn his bath blue and fizzy.

“He may have taken a tumble and lost his head,” she’d winced, looking to Robin and telling him, “but he’s in the basket of bath bombs. Please use him up for me; he was a gift with purchase.”

Roland had practically dragged his daddy toward the stairs, anxious to meet Roboto, as he was apparently now named, leaving Regina and Henry to clean up dinner. She’s not usually a messy cook, so there hadn’t been too terribly much to do – just rinsing dishes and loading the dishwasher, wiping down the table and the countertops. They’d tag-teamed it – Henry clearing plates for her to rinse and stack in the dishwasher, then doing the wiping while she’d scrubbed the couple of pans she’d used.

And then she’d sent him out to drag the power washer from the front of the house back to the garage – if it wasn’t going to be used again before tomorrow, she didn’t want to risk it disappearing overnight.

Besides, it gave her time to fix herself a drink. 

She’d wanted wine – had thought the idea of a nice, full glass of merlot sounded wonderfully relaxing. But she hadn’t wanted to open a fresh bottle just for herself, and while she knows Robin will drink wine, he usually goes for a beer or a cider first, so…

She settles for whiskey, pulling the bottle out and pouring a measure into a tall glass – then adding another little splash, because she deserves it after the week she’s had. She fills the rest with ice, and ginger ale, then caps the bottle and nearly puts it back in the cabinet before she thinks better of it. Instead, she moves it to the very back of the countertop and settles a lowball next to it for Robin.

And then she takes a minute to just sit at her clean kitchen table, in the quiet, and sip her drink. She takes in the steady hum of the dishwasher running behind her, smiles a little at an echo of laughter from upstairs (they must not have bothered to close the bathroom door), and then Henry’s coming in from the back with a creak of springs and a soft slam of the storm door.

He washes his hands (without being asked, which has a little proud smile spreading onto her face), then plunks down into the seat next to her.

“All set?”

“Yep,” he tells her. “It’s kinda close to the car though.”

“I’m sure Robin will take it before I have anywhere to go tomorrow, so that’s fine,” she assures, taking another sip of her drink.

As soon as Henry notices it, he asks if he can have a sip, he’s thirsty from dragging the washer, and she has to admit, “This one has whiskey in it, so no. But you can pour yourself some soda if you want.”

Henry helps himself, returning to the table a few minutes later with a cup of his own – a large plastic one with a bit more of the sugary stuff than she’d have poured for him, but, hell, it’s the last weekend before school starts, and it’s a sleepover night. She’ll let him have this one.

He takes a big gulp, and then another, a third, and then sets the cup down with a satisfied _Ahh_ , and a smack of his lips that makes her chuckle.

“I love you,” she tells him warmly. “I hope you know how much, sweetheart.”

“I do,” he tells her simply with a little smile, and Regina grins back at him.

God, she is so lucky. Even when things feel awful like they have lately, she has to remember how _lucky_ she is. She has a wonderful son, and a wonderful man in her life, and this house, and her health. Life is alright. Good, even, if she’s able to step back and look at it semi-objectively.

She may have had a laundry list of things to bitch about this morning, but she also has this. And those things, she’ll get through. They will pass.

She spends long enough in her thoughts that the silence stretches long between them, until Henry finally breaks it with a question that makes her breath catch a little:

“Should I be mad at Grandpa?”

Her heart clenches, and she reaches over, squeezing his hand and assuring him, “No, sweetheart. No, you should be nice to Grandpa.” She runs her thumb over his hand and says, “It’s hard when things are strained with your kids; it hurts your heart. And he doesn’t deserve that.”

“If he doesn’t deserve it, why are you avoiding him?” Henry asks, getting right to the point as usual.

Regina exhales slowly and sits back, reaching for her drink just to give her hands something to do as she tells him carefully, “We can’t always help how we feel, even when we know it’s not fair.”

“Is that why you’re drinking whiskey?” he asks, and she laughs ruefully, thinking that it’s probably not a good sign if your kid thinks you’re drinking your feelings away.

“No, that’s not why,” she assures him. “It just sounded good. It’s been a long week; I wanted to treat myself.”

Henry nods a little, and then he’s scowling slightly into his cup, taking a deep breath and telling her, “I’m really sorry about what I said last night. About my dad.”

“I know you are, sweetheart,” she smiles, sitting forward a little and taking the opportunity to handle the situation the way she wishes she had the night before. “And I know you’re nervous, and I wish I could make that go away for you. I know what it’s like to be stuck doing things you don’t want to; Grandma did that to me all the time when I was young. And I hated it. I don’t ever want you to feel the way she made me feel – like I had no say in anything, or like how I felt didn’t matter to her. Your feelings matter to me, _always_ , and I will always listen to you. But sometimes, I have to do what’s right even if it’s not what you want. And this is one of those times.” He gives her another sulky nod and gulps his ginger ale again. “But you are going to have a good time, I promise. And if you don’t…”

“You’ll come get me,” he finishes.

Regina reaches for him again, giving his arm a squeeze and making sure to meet his gaze when she tells him again, “I promise.”

“Okay,” he says, and she thinks he actually means it this time. That maybe he’s just a little bit more ‘okay’ with the whole situation than he had been; and at least she doesn’t feel like a useless crybaby over it, so that’s something.

The thought gives her pause, she hears her own words echoing back at her, and she glances at the rubber band around her wrist, her heart starting to pound.

No thunder, she thinks. Nobody will know.

Still, she hesitates, twining the little band around her finger absently, like she’s just casually playing with it, shifting it from finger to finger for a moment before she lets it slip and snap back against her skin.

It looked like an accident, she thinks, hopes, and just for good measure she grimaces comically and tells Henry, “Oops.”

He snickers a little (that nervous anxiety in her chest unspools; he bought it), then tilts his head at her, and says,  “You’re not anything like Grandma, you know. Sometimes I think you were adopted.”

Regina laughs at that—and thank God, because that first sentence had squeezed at her throat, and spread the hot prickle of impending tears behind her eyes.

She doesn’t know what compels her to say it, maybe it’s the whiskey (it’s not, she’s barely finished half her glass), but she finds herself telling him, “I used to wish I was, sometimes. Or that I wasn’t hers, anyway. I had this fantasy that someday Grandpa would tell me that she wasn’t my real mom, that my mom had been someone else who had died tragically when I was very young, and he’d wanted me to have a mother, so he married Grandma, but now he realized how wrong he’d been and we were going to move away to Florida with my uncles and live there instead, and I wouldn’t have to see her anymore.” Her brows lift, a look of regret crossing her face. “But I’m afraid I am very much your grandmother’s daughter.”

“You still turned out pretty good,” he tells her with a smirk, and Regina scoffs a quiet laugh. She’s not so sure, but Henry is, and that’s what matters. And then he asks her, “What was your fantasy mom like? Did you imagine her?”

Regina takes another sip of her drink and nods, answering, “Of course. She was… kind. And loving. And she would bake cookies and let me eat as many as I wanted without saying they were going to rot my teeth or make me fat, or…” Other things Regina doesn’t feel any need to repeat to her son.  “She’d tell me I was beautiful, and smart, and that she loved me. And she’d be proud of everything that I did, as long I tried my best. Even if I wasn’t the best, or even very good, she’d have loved me anyway. She’d just be glad that I was hers, y’know? And we’d do things together – me, and her, and my dad. We’d have gone to the beach, or museums, or Disney World.” She laughs softly at herself, at her silly childish fantasies, and shrugs. “And she was Cuban, like Daddy and me; his family would have loved her, and we’d get to be close to them.”

“They don’t like Grandma, do they?” he asks, like she’s just given him the prized piece to an old puzzle. “That’s why we don’t know them very well?”

“They don’t,” Regina confirms, although maybe she shouldn’t. She’s always tried to protect him from these things, grown-up things, but… maybe he’s old enough now to know the truth. Some truths. Maybe Dr. Hopper is right, and she needs to start accepting that he’s able to understand more than she’d like. So she clears her throat a little, and continues, “Or rather, she doesn't like most of _them_ very much, and so she made it very hard for them to like her. So they don’t want her around – they didn’t like the way she acted toward them, or your grandpa, or me, when I was little. So we stopped spending time with them – Grandpa still keeps in touch with them, but not Grandma or me.”

Just another thing her mother has cost her, she thinks, chasing the bitter taste of the confession with the sweet taste of her whiskey ginger. A whole side of her family, a whole part of her lineage she could have had access to, but no, Mother had to go be a royal bitch to everyone, and so here she is.

“You know what’s funny?” Henry interrupts her thoughts (probably for the best; the last thing she needs is for her evening to devolve into another spiral about her mother’s sins).

“What?”

When he says, “You’re just like her,” Regina’s heart knocks hard, then drops straight down into her gut.

She tries to hide it, forcing a smile and shaking her head at him, saying, “I thought you just said I wasn’t…”

“No, not Grandma,” he says like she’s being silly (and maybe she is). “The mom you wanted to have. You’re just like how you said she would be.”

And just like that, her heart springs right back up, lodging in her throat and choking her, pushing a little well of tears up to shine across her lashes. She manages to say, “Oh,” and “Thank you,” wiping at the tears that spill down both her cheeks when she blinks.

Henry’s brow pinches, concern blooming on his face as he says to her, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

Regina shakes her head, scooting her chair a little closer to his and wrapping her arm around him, giving him a squeeze.

“It’s okay, they’re good tears,” she swears, dropping her brow to his for a moment and then pulling back with a sniffle and a steadying breath. She doesn’t scoot her chair back, though, just looks at her son and tells him, “Henry, you are the most important thing in my life; I worry so much about you, about you being happy, and healthy, and about doing what’s right for you, about not being a bad mom to you. Being enough, all on my own, without your dad to help. I was so worried before you were born that I didn’t know how to be a good mom, because mine was…” She laughs wetly, and mutters, “not great. But your dad was so sure that I would be a great mom; he used to tell me all the time, every time I worried, that I had nothing to worry about. And then he died, and… I was so worried when you were young that I would fail you. And him. That I wouldn’t turn out to be the mom you needed.”

Henry gives her a lopsided little smile and says, “But he was right. You’re never a bad mom. You’re the best mom.”

Those tears well up again even as she her lips curve, gratitude expanding in her chest like a balloon, pressing against her ribcage, filling it up. She tells him, “Thank you,” and confesses, “I really needed that this week. It’s been a tough one for me, and I didn’t feel like I was doing a very good job with you. I was worried you were feeling neglected, or like your mom was… not able to take care of you, or… being weird, or… I don’t know.”

Saying these things makes her palms itch; sitting here, brushing away tears makes her feel vulnerable and very un-Mom-like, but it’s supposed to be good, right? Being honest with the people in her life about what she’s going through, trusting that Henry can handle Mom being knocked off her pedestal a bit? Nerves jump in her belly, but she started it, and she’s going to see it through – and besides, he doesn’t seem upset now that he’s been assured he hasn’t made her sad.

He’s just… listening. And talking, telling her, “I didn’t feel neglected. But I know something is wrong, and it made me kinda scared. You looked sick, and you were crabby, and you just weren’t Mom.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Something twists hard in her chest; he shouldn’t have to feel that way, he shouldn’t have to be afraid for her. (She should have worked harder to hide it all from him, somehow.) “You don’t have anything to be scared of. Everything’s fine.”

“You’re lying,” he says to her, his mouth drawing into a scowly, betrayed pout. “Things aren’t fine.”

“I’m not—” But she is, a bit, isn’t she? So she sighs, and amends, “I’m okay.”

Henry’s still eyeing her doubtfully, still looking at her like he doesn’t quite believe her, so Regina swallows thickly, and speaks slowly, choosing her words carefully as she tells him, “Your grandfather told me about something. Something that happened years ago, when I was young. He and your grandma kept it from me all this time, and probably always would have, but I asked him something, and in trying to answer _that_ he felt like he needed to tell me this other thing. He thought I was old enough to know.”

His pout shifts into something more curious, and she decides to cut that one off at the knees immediately: “I’m never going to tell you what it is, it doesn’t affect you in any way, so please don’t ask me. But it hurt me a lot—being told, and that he never told me before, that I didn’t know about it when I was younger. He didn’t do anything wrong, and I know why he kept it from me, but it’s really been weighing on me. I’ve had a hard time dealing with it the last few days.” Regina takes a breath and admits, “I haven’t been sleeping well, and I’ve been very sad.” Her voice breaks a little, but she swallows, blinks back the tears before they can even really form and pushes them down, down, telling him, “But I’ll be okay; I’m starting to feel better now. You and Robin helped so much, taking care of everything yesterday so I could relax this weekend, and cleaning everything up today. You’ve been _so_ helpful, Henry; thank you.”

“I wanted you to stop being sad,” he says to her, and she has to sit a little straighter and look away to quell _that_ rush of tears.

She reaches for her drink again, swallows to push down the knot of raw emotion in her throat, and then tells him, “I am. I will. I’m getting there.”

He seems satisfied at that, or maybe he’s just absorbing. Thinking. It’s probably that, she decides, as she watches Henry push his cup across the table with his fingertip, poking it this way and that. Regina waits for it to tip or wobble, but he’s low enough that it doesn’t.

Finally, he asks her, “Grandpa told you at my lesson, didn’t he? You were weird on the way home.”

“Yeah, he did. I was really upset on Sunday – _so_ upset.” She looks at him for a moment and then says, “Do you remember when you were little, and you were so nervous about school? And you used to get those horrible bellyaches?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’m sorry to say, I think you got that from me,” she confesses with a loving little frown. “Except instead of just bellyaches, I also get this feeling sometimes like… there’s an elephant on my chest. Or like someone’s wrapped a belt around it and buckled it too tight. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it can be scary. And it happened that night, once you were in bed and I didn’t have to worry about being Mom anymore. I didn’t have anything to distract me from all the feelings I had been trying not to feel all day – your grandma being awful to me at brunch, and then what your grandpa told me, and… it was bad. So bad that I left you here all alone, sleeping—which I felt terrible about—and went over to Robin’s. I needed to talk to someone about all of it.”

“You could’ve talked to me,” he says with such sweet innocence that her heart melts like warm chocolate, going all sweet and puddly in an instant. How she ended up with such an amazing kid is beyond her.

But amazing or not, “No, sweetheart, I couldn’t have. You’re my son, not my therapist. You do so much to make me happy – especially when I’m sad, sometimes just being with you makes me feel better about everything. A lot of times, just being with you helps. But my problems aren’t yours to worry about – that’s why I have Dr. Hopper, and friends like Robin, or Kathryn, or even Mary Margaret. Or Grandpa. Grown-up problems need a grown-up to help with them. Does that make sense?”

He nods, and says, “Yeah, I guess. Did Robin make the elephant feeling go away?”

“He made me grilled cheese,” she tells him with a smile, adding, “And he burned it.”

She leaves out the pot and orgasms – being this honest with Henry may be turning out to be surprisingly refreshing, cathartic even (her palms don’t itch anymore, and her eyes are dry now), but he doesn’t need to know Mom is a sex-starved occasional-pothead on top of an anxiety-ridden basket case.

They share a little giggle about Robin’s burned cheese toasties, though – that’s perfectly innocent – and she continues, telling him, “But yes, he made me feel a little better. And he’s kept checking on me all week, making sure I’m doing alright. So you don’t have to worry about me – Robin’s got that covered. Your mom’s had a bad week, but I’m going to be just fine.”

“He loves you, you know.”

Regina sighs heavily; she should have seen that one coming from a mile away. “Henry…”

“He _does_. You should know that, especially if you’re sad.”

“I—” Regina lets out a breath and says another thing she probably shouldn’t: “I know he does, Henry. He’s a very good friend to me.”

Henry gives her a look – a look she is absolutely certain he picked up from her, all raised brows, his chin tipped down, her I’m-not-buying-for-a-minute-that-you-actually-put-those-clothes-in-the-hamper-and-not-under-your-bed look.

And then he says, “He doesn’t _friend_ love you, Mom.”

“ _Henry_ ,” she tells him pointedly. “Not right now. Not this week. I don’t want to do this right now, okay?”

Much to her relief, he backs off immediately, nodding and telling her, “Okay.” And then he adds, “Not this week,” and she thinks she’s surely not heard the last of his prodding her toward Robin. He’s just giving her a break because she’s having a hard time, and Regina’s honestly not sure if that makes her feel better or worse about the whole thing.

She doesn’t have much time to dwell on it, though, because Robin and Roland are returning, Roland dressed in one of Henry’s shirts (which is way too big on him) and, she’s pretty sure, nothing else.

“How was bath time?” she asks, turning her attention from her son to the man she— the man she _doesn’t_ love. Just… cares very deeply for.

“Yummy!” Roland pipes up, giving his own arm a sniff and then holding it out for her as Robin carries him closer. When they’re within range she leans in and gives him a sniff; he smells like a lavender bouquet. “I smell like the garden!”

“That you do,” Regina chuckles as Robin settles him down on the floor; Roland wastes no time climbing into Regina’s lap.

Robin’s voice is low, like he’s trying to keep it between them, although there’s no possible way Henry can’t hear him as he asks, “Everything alright?”

Regina frowns up at him, but it takes her own soft sniffle for her to realize she’s probably red-eyed and obviously recently emotional. He glances between her and Henry, trying to read the room, no doubt, but Regina offers up a smile, a little tightly, maybe, but not without warmth, and says, “We’re fine. We were just talking about some things.”

Then she drops her gaze to Roland and says, “Mister, I’m pretty sure you’re not wearing any pants,” and earns herself a preschooler’s giggle.

“Yeah, I didn’t think of pajamas when I tossed him in the bath,” Robin says, seemingly appeased that there’s nothing he needs to worry about with her and Henry. “I’m going to run next door and grab something for him, and shower myself. I’m a bit... grimy.”

“Take your time; we’ll be here.”

“With no pants!” Roland announces, clearly pleased as punch that he gets to run around with no bottoms for a while.

Regina laughs. _Boys_.

“Just you,” she teases, giving him a little poke in the belly. “Why don’t you and Henry go pick out a movie, and I’ll make us some popcorn?”

Roland nods and scoots down from her lap again, urging, “Come on, Henry, let’s go pick!” as he skips his way toward the den.

Henry stands and starts to follow, but after a second he turns back, taking a step toward Regina and then surprising her with a tight hug. “I love you, Mom,” he murmurs, and her arms band around him, her heart melting all over again as she tells him that she loves him too.

“So, so much,” she adds, pressing a kiss to the side of his head.

And then he’s off, leaving her and her drippy emotions alone in the kitchen with Robin.

“You sure you’re alright?” he asks again, and she nods.

“Yeah, I’m good,” she assures, smiling up at him. “We just had a good talk, that’s all.”

Robin tilts his head slightly, brows lifting. “A good talk?”

“A long talk,” she amends. “About… stuff. About me. How I’ve been this week.”

“I see,” Robin says, all knowing sympathy, as he reaches over and wraps his fingers around the back of her chair; they’re warm where they press against her bare shoulder and the contact makes her yearn and press a little closer. “I bet that was… heavy.”

“A bit, but I think it was necessary – for both of us. He doesn’t feel so in the dark anymore, I think, and I feel lighter – but a bit raw.” She turns a bit more in her chair, facing him more fully, and asking, “I don’t suppose I could get a hug from you, too?”

Those warm fingers shift and turn, skating across her shoulder, chasing shivers toward her neck as he answers without hesitation, “Of course, babe. Come here.”

She pushes herself to her feet and is immediately folded up into Robin’s arms. He rocks her gently as she sighs and absorbs him, breathing in the smell of him, a mixture of sweat and lavender bath bomb and a barely-there undercurrent of pine. His voice is quiet, soothing, when he murmurs, “So I’ve decided…”

“Mm?”

“After the boys go to bed, I’m going sneak into your bedroom and make good on our fake bet.” His beard tickles her brow as he turns his head slightly, and they notch together even more snugly. “Give you a good rub down, get you all relaxed and boneless before bed.”

“Mmm, perfect,” Regina hums, taking a deep breath and then tipping her head up to whisper, “We’re lucky the boys wanted a sleepover.”

When he tells her, “Not as much as I do, I promise you,” she laughs softly, bumping her nose against his and whispering, _Me too_.

She licks her lips, squeezes him a little more tightly, one ear on the muted sound of the boys a safe distance away. And then she teases, “I could use a… _nightcap_. But not until they’re out cold, okay?”

“I promise,” he tells her again. One of his hands strokes down her spine in a way that makes her shiver, settling warmly at the base of it and pressing there as he murmurs, “They’ll never know.”

She should really put some space between them. A bit of breathing room, some room for the Lord, something, anything to make this look at all ‘friendly’ and not like the foreplay it so clearly is. There's no way Henry would be at all fooled if he walked in and caught them like this.

And she will, she’ll do that. In a minute.

But first, she presses a little closer, and tells him, “Thank you – this has been a really good day after all, and I don’t think it would have been without all of you here.”

The corner of his mouth turns up, one of those dimples winking at her as his fingertips press against her back and he murmurs, “Music to my ears.”

He leans in close then, nearly kisses her – and she nearly lets him, too, but in the end, sense wins out. She pulls back just before their lips touch, giving him a playful warning look and telling him, “Still no,” before she disentangles completely and urges, “Go. Get your son some pants. I’ll save you a spot on the couch.”

Robin groans, and mutters something about her being a tease, but he listens, and leaves.

 

**.::.**

 

Robin had been optimistic that their sons wouldn’t make it through the whole of their movie – certainly not after the time they’d spent carefully erecting their forts, connecting sheets with clothespins borrowed from Regina, wedging edges between sofa cushions and over furniture, borrowing some of the kitchen chairs for outside support. In the end, they’d made a lovely little makeshift bungalow, with good sightlines of the TV, both boys cocooning themselves in their sleeping bags while Robin made do with a pallet of blankets and one of the pillows from the guest room. It had been no trouble to insist he’d be fine – after all, he’d had very little intention of spending most of the night there. 

Regina had insisted she didn’t fit in said fort and escaped up to her bedroom, her last glance at Robin lingering long enough that he had no doubt she’d gone up there to await her _massage_. He’d never longed quite so much for some sort of child-safe sleeping powder, some magic cure that would knock them straight off to dreamland, so he and Regina could indulge the tension that’s been simmering between them for most of the day.

But the boys had had other ideas.

Not only had they made it through the entirety of the movie he’d put on for them, they’d made it through the credits, _and_ another solid twenty minutes of snickering in the dark.

She’s been up here for a good two hours, and as Robin climbs the stairs and turns left toward her bedroom, he half expects to find Regina sacked out on her own pillows, snoring the night away. She deserves all the rest she can manage after the sleep she’s been losing lately, so Robin knocks softly on her door, a low double rap that won’t wake her if she has managed to nod off.

Her quiet, “Come in,” sends a thrill through him. Thank God.

Robin opens the door and shuts it behind himself (locks it behind himself, too, because the last thing he wants is little eyes to catch them in a compromising position), and there she is on her bed, closing the book she’d been reading and giving him a smile as she greets warmly, “Hello.”

Robin takes in the sight of the room and all his blood rushes south.

The only light on is the bedside lamp, but there’s a candle burning on the nightstand, a small cluster lit in the center of her dresser. The whole room smells spicy and rich, warm. Sexy. She’s stripped the bed down to the top sheet, her throw blanket folded on the side of the bed she’s not occupying, a towel folded on top of _that_.

Regina is sitting up against her headboard, ankles crossed in front of her. She’s changed those snug jeans for soft cotton sleep shorts, her legs all bare and tempting like they had been earlier. And God bless her, she’d kept the tank top. Even better, it appears she’s braless now, which means she’d had to go through the bother of taking it off and putting it back on again. For him, he thinks.

Robin grins at her, tells her, “Hi,” and “You’ve been busy,” as he closes the distance between them, unable to resist her stretched out the way she is for him.

“I’ve been the opposite of busy,” she tells him as she twists to stash her book in the nightstand, leaning in to blow out the candle there.

“You had time to set the mood,” Robin points out, reaching for one of her ankles once he’s within reach, giving it a little tug until she opens her legs and he can sit between them, pulling one across his lap, skimming his palm over her calf, her knee, halfway up her thigh.

When she turns back toward him, she’s smirking, and he can see that she’s taken off what little makeup she’d had on, her skin looking soft and dewy in the low light.

He wants her, badly, has been dying to kiss her properly since their all-too-brief make-out session last night. In fact, he’s staring at her lips, imaging how they’re about to feel against his, when she says, “All I did was light some candles and spare my sheets from any massage oil stains; and then I read – for a very long time.”

That last bit is playfully accusatory, and her smirk purses just a little. He shifts his gaze up, finds those dark eyes in the dim, enjoys the familiar feistiness of her faux-glare. He so loves her flirtatious and relaxed like this.

And he wants to _relax_ her even more, so he scoots in a little closer, until their torsos are nearly flush, and mutters, “You can take that last bit up with your son and his motormouth,” before he busies his mouth with something much more enjoyable than talking about the children.

He kisses her, warmly and with an immediate tease of tongue, makes it full of promise and intent as his hands find her hips and squeeze.

The soft chuckle his comment had pulled from her melts into a quiet moan, and she kisses him back for a minute, arms winding around his shoulders, her chest pressing against him. And then she breathes against his lips, “Are the boys asleep?

“Mm,” Robin confirms, dropping a series of lingering pecks toward her jaw, his fingers tangling in her hair and tilting her head to give him access to her neck as he says, “Finally. I had to trick them into playing the quiet game.”

She laughs, a soft sound against his ear, and then his tongue finds her pulse and she gasps, fingertips pressing into his shoulder as she manages, “Let me guess, you lost?”

“Oh, I'd say I definitely _won_ ,” he murmurs without taking his lips from her skin, and the soft tickle of them makes a shiver race through her, draws another gasp from her.

Robin grins and tilts his chin just so, letting his beard graze lightly over the sensitive skin; she shivers again, letting out a shaky laugh and pushing at his shoulders as she scolds him to, “Stop that. You’re giving me goosebumps.”

Robin can’t resist glancing down into the space she’s made between them, stealing a peek at her tits through that tank top and biting at his smile when he finds her nipples poking at the cotton. He sends one hand to cup her lazily and teases, “So I see.” His thumb circles over the hard nub, and he thinks she takes a deeper breath at the action, or maybe a slower one. Barely noticeable, but he’s paying close attention. He does it again, enjoys the feel of her beneath his touch and asks, “Did you leave this on for me?”

Her smile blooms, her body presses a little closer to his and she drops her voice to tell him, “I thought you’d want to take it off yourself.”

It’s all the invitation he needs, his hands sliding down to the bottom hem as he tells her, “You thought right.” And then he’s sliding it up, off, tossing it blindly beside the bed and scooping her up a bit until he can catch her nipple in his lips and give it a good suck.

She lets out this sound, this surprised, low moan that she strangles into a gasp; Robin feels her nails scrape lightly along his scalp, so he swirls his tongue over her and then does it again.

The noise she makes is quieter this time, just a high little _Mm_. Her nails scratch teasingly at his nape, down his neck, her breathing definitely a little quicker now; Robin is already stone hard in his sweats.

When he starts planting a line of open-mouthed kisses in the direction of her other nipple, Regina gives a little tug to the hair at his nape and teases, “I am still getting that massage, right? I was really looking forward to it, and I did go to all the trouble of stripping the bed.”

“I thought you said it was no trouble?” Robin replies cheekily, lifting his head to steal a quick kiss from her lips. He doesn’t give her a chance to answer, continuing, “And I think we could make good use of the stripped bed regardless – but yes, you are.”

He kisses her again, and she responds, but there’s a hint of hesitation there, an edge of something he can just barely feel. When he pulls back, she presses her lips together, licks them; he can see in her expression that there’s something on her mind, and he’s not entirely sure it’s something he’ll like.

Robin shifts them just a little, lets her settle her weight a little more fully on the mattress so his arm can loop loosely around her waist rather than support her, one hand rising to brush a lock of hair back behind her ear.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s _wrong_ , per se,” she begins, and Robin’s hope sinks lower as his wariness rises. “I just… I had a lot of time up here to think, and…” She tilts her head a little, her brow knitting. “You have Roland next weekend, right? For the holiday?”

The question puts another crack in this lovely cradle of anticipation he’d been enjoying, his annoyance at Marian’s call from a few days ago resurfacing. “I don’t, actually. Marian has a family thing; she asked if she could have him for the weekend.”

“And you’re not working?”

Robin shakes his head, wondering at this abrupt shift in conversation. “August had already made the schedule when she told me, and Ruby doesn’t want to give up her holiday tips. Why?”

“Well…” she begins, and she’s all teasing again now, smiling coyly at him, and pointing out what he’s forgotten in the heat of the moment: “Henry’s away, and you’re free…” Robin’s smile echoes hers as she trails her fingertips up his bicep and invites, “Maybe you could come over Saturday for dinner, and stay for… dessert.”

Well, then. How’s a man supposed to say no to that? More importantly, why would he want to?

Robin leans in close again, kissing her once, barely a breath between them as he teases, “I might ask for an appetizer, too.”

Regina chuckles against his mouth, kissing him again and whispering, “And maybe Sunday brunch.” Her lips press against his before he can tell her what a cracking idea that is and then she’s sweetening the pot even more with a breathy, “Stay the weekend. We can take our time, no struggling with bedtimes, or hungry kids, or having to avoid being caught or overheard.”

“Mm, does that mean I can try to make you scream?”

That arm around her waist sinks just a little, until he can palm her ass and squeeze it. She nods, and arches her back a little, and moans a quiet, “Please do,” and how is he supposed to do anything but kiss her after _that_ particular invitation?

He presses forward as he does it, urging her backward into her pillows, and they make out heatedly for a few seconds, her knee pressing up along his back, his hand pinned between her and the bed, her hips grinding up against his.

When she turns her head to the side, he takes it as invitation to cover her neck in hot kisses, but it’s really just so she can gasp, “So it’s a date?”

 

Robin _Mmhmm_ s into her skin, and then she says, “Good. Then I don’t have to feel so bad about what I’m about to say,” and he freezes, dropping his head into the crook of her shoulder with a little groan of disappointment.

They’re not going to be fucking tonight, are they?

He doesn’t even make her say it – he does it for her, a disheartened, “You don’t want to have sex with the boys downstairs,” muttered into her skin.

Regina’s fingers tangle into his hair, tugging him up to look down at her no doubt, but Robin does one better and sits back entirely, letting her sit up again (because why torture themselves with more snogging if they’re not going to get anywhere with it?).

He hears her sigh, and then she’s reaching for him, turning his jaw toward her and clarifying, “I don’t want to have sex tonight – not because of the boys, although that is a factor – but I do want orgasms.”

Oh. Well, that’s… promising, at least.

“If not the boys, then why?” he asks, pulling her close again, because he can, and because it’s incredibly difficult not to keep looking at her naked tits when they’re right there in front of him, and he should probably listen to her right now.

“Because…” she begins slowly, “I’ve felt very out of control lately, especially when it comes to you. To us. I set a boundary, and I cross it, and I’ve felt awful about it. Weak. And I know it’s silly, I know it’s in my head, a lot of it, but I still felt it. And you said it’s up to me, right? Whatever we do, or don’t do, it’s my choice? Whatever I need that day?”

Robin nods, and feels like a bit of an ass for not hiding his disappointment better. He’d promised her the reins and the second she steered a way he didn’t like, he’d pouted over it.

“Yeah, of course. That’s the deal.”

She nods a little, the corner of her mouth tipping into a smile. “What I need today is to feel like I’m in control of me. To resist temptation even if I really, really don’t want to – to know again that I can. And trust me, I really, really want to give in.”

She says it while pressing closer to him, pressing her tits up against him, running a hand down his chest, dipping it under the hem of his t-shirt.

“So we’re going to willingly torture ourselves, is what you’re saying?” he teases her; Regina tilts her head a little, one brow quirking, and nods.

“We are, but isn’t it a good kind of torture? Anticipating. Wanting.” Her fingers skim up his belly, light and teasing as she purrs, “Knowing there’s more that you could have, but not having it.”

“You don’t think we’ve had enough of that?” he points out, but it’s not an accusation, he’s not arguing with her. Just pointing out that deprivation has never been in short supply for them.

She doesn’t seem to mind; instead she’s pressing closer, shifting, adjusting, until she’s actually straddling his lap, combing her fingers through the hair at his temples and pointing out, “But think of how good it felt, to finally give in. Think back to the other night, and the moment you _finally_ got to be inside me, after all that wanting, all that waiting. Wasn’t it _incredible_?” She’s looking at him in a way that would have him thinking she wanted a repeat showing right here on the spot if she hadn’t just told him point-blank that it wasn’t happening. Then she licks her lips, and whispers, “Because it was for me. God, Robin, it felt so good. _You_ felt so good.”

He kisses her again, can’t not with her like this, can’t resist gripping her ass and grinding her against him lightly either. She lets out a quiet moan and rocks lazily against where he’s still half-hard.

“It was bloody amazing,” he admits when they pause for breath. “Which is why I want to do it again.”

She snickers against him, steals another kiss and hums, “Mmm, but just think how much you’ll want it after you’ve spent a whole week waiting for it...”

“I am, that’s why I want it now,” he chuckles, and Regina gives his shoulder a little slap, shaking her head and rolling her eyes, and grinning.

“I’d say you have no patience, but we both know _that’s_ not true,” she tells him; Robin gives her ass a squeeze and presses her more snugly against him, glad she didn’t try that one and force him to bite his tongue rather than point out that he has been so very, very patient when it comes to the two of them and Regina’s wishes. “I do admittedly have a little bit of a self-deprivation streak. ‘That cookie would be great today, but just think how good it will be if you save it til Friday; if you get to spend the whole week looking forward to it instead of just eating it now and being done with it.’ Something tells me you’d just eat the cookie.’

“I’d eat three,” he tells her with a nod. “And then you.”

She scoffs, still grinning, then trails fingertips down the side of his neck, hooking her index finger into the collar of his shirt and sobering a little. “I also…” She breathes in, sighs out. “Every time we’ve been together, I’ve felt guilty. I’ve never been able to just relax and enjoy you, because it’s always been something I was too weak to resist, something I shouldn’t be doing, something I’ll regret in the morning. And it’s always happened when I was upset – even the other night, it happened because I was angry at you. But I’m not today – I’m having a good day, I don’t feel guilty about wanting you, it’s not wrong, I’m allowed. I want to have an everything-but night where we kiss, and we touch, and we enjoy each other… and then we stop short. Leave ourselves anticipating. We know we can have that cookie next weekend, it’ll be there, waiting, and incredible. I want to spend the whole week _wanting_ you, and knowing I can have you, and knowing I’m _going_ to have you. Eventually.”

She’s cheating.

That’s all he can think when she’s all pressed up against him, with that bedroom voice and those bedroom eyes, talking about how complicated all the rest of their sex has been and following it up with how badly she wants to _want_ him. She’s cheating.

Because he’s hard for her again, now, and he thinks of how much he’d wanted her all day and how much he’d enjoyed flirting with her when he could, and how thrilling it had been to sneak a kiss here and there, and how gratifying it was to _finally_ , finally kiss her in the privacy of her own room tonight.

And he thinks she may have a point.

Robin narrows his eyes at her just a little and accuses lightly, “I think you’ve tricked me.”

Regina smiles. “Oh?”

“Mm. And I think I am going to spend the next week”—his hands trail down her thighs, back to her knees and then reversing course, his fingertips pressing firmly into her soft skin—“making sure you’re thinking of me, making sure you’re wanting me just as much as I’m wanting you. I’m going to flirt with you shamelessly, you do know that, right?”

That smile becomes a grin and she leans in close, lips almost on his as she tells him, “Game on.”

The kiss she gives him is heady and hot, her hips still rocking into his, her arms winding around his neck again. It ends much too soon, as far as Robin is concerned – but it’s only a pause. Just long enough for Regina to turn and stretch herself toward the nightstand again, fumbling for the matches resting beside the candle there and lighting the wick again.

When she turns back, he looks at her questioningly, and she admits, “It’s a massage oil candle – I blew it out because you’re not supposed to pour it while the flame is hot, but we’ve been talking, so I thought I’d light it for another few minutes.”

His mind blanks out somewhere after _massage oil candle_ , overcome by the realization that her plan for this evening was to have him _pour hot wax all over her,_ massage her with it, and then not even let him have sex with her afterward; Robin suddenly thinks he may have vastly underestimated what a tease his lover is.

She says, “I’m sure we can find some way to pass the time,” and Robin scoffs, one arm tightening its grip around her, while the other drops back to the mattress for leverage so he can flip them with ease. She lets out a startled little sound, and then a laugh, scooting herself up the bed (across it, really, she’s spread over it wrongways now, using her folded blanket and towel as a pillow) in a way that makes her shorts drag down her hips slightly, caught between him and the sheets.

Robin takes it as a sign to get rid of them entirely, giving them a little push down her thighs and then easing away from her to help her pull them off. For some reason he’d expected her to be bare underneath, but she’s not. As she shifts a bit to help him rid her of her shorts, he realizes that the bright teal fabric of her underwear is actually a thong, and it reminds him of something.

He drops her shorts in the general direction of her tank top and reaches into the pocket of his sweats, tossing a little scrap of grey and lavender toward her, and telling her, “Brought that back for you.”

Regina frowns for the half-second it takes her to realize it’s her thong from the other night, and then her eyes pop wide and she hisses, “You had that in your pocket all night?”

Robin joins her on the bed again, snickering when she balls the thong up and pitches it at his chest angrily. It bounces off ineffectually and lands on the sheet as he tells her, “Only since I came back from my shower.”

Regina is not particularly appeased by that, questioning him fiercely, “ _What if that had fallen out while you were playing forts with the boys?_ ”

She has a point there, doesn’t she.

Robin frowns a bit, and says, “Well, I suppose then we’d have had some explaining to do, wouldn’t we?”

Her eyes flash angrily, narrowing as she gives him a little kick in the shin, not even a little bit painful with her bare toes and how little she’s trying. “Do _not_ do things like that. We have to be careful. You can’t just—just— _carry my underwear in your pocket all night_.”

“I did it last night,” he points out, and maybe this is entirely the wrong angle, because it just makes her huff and fret even more. So he mollifies, stretching his body along hers and bringing his hand to her belly, running it up the planes of her torso and enjoying the way the dim light plays off the shape of her. He pitches his voice low, and penitent, and asks her, “Would it help if I promise never to do it again? To be more careful with your panties in the future?”

She’s still scowling. “There will be no more panties in the future.”

Robin can’t help himself; he grins. “I like the sound of that.”

Regina scoffs, and rolls her eyes at him, and says, “Shut up and kiss me some more so I can forget what an idiot you are.”

It’s easy penance to pay, so Robin bends his head to hers and sets about making up for his sin. His thigh finds its way between hers; one of his hands tangles in her hair. One of hers ends up in his, gripping, holding his mouth to hers as she kisses her frustration out angrily, and then… not so angrily. It doesn’t take long before they’re both breathless again, her hips rocking against his thigh, his fingertips grazing trails over her sides while hers explore his back beneath the cotton of his t-shirt. When she’s managed to get it rucked halfway up, Robin sits, intent on pulling it off and finally feeling her bare torso against his.

As he does, she urges, “Blow the candle out, let it cool for a minute.”

His shirt joins hers on the floor; the candle goes out again.

Robin crawls back onto the bed with her, admiring the sight of her, and asking, “Have I kissed my way to forgiveness yet?”

“Why, is it a hardship?” she asks, enough lilting tease in her voice for him to know the answer to his question: yes, he’s forgiven. But why end the fun now?

“Oh, yes, terrible hardship,” he tells her, dropping a kiss to her shoulder. “Difficult.” Her collarbone. “Torture, even.” Her throat.

“Mm, well, as we’ve already established, I enjoy torture,” she taunts, and Robin grins, and murmurs, _That you do..._ , her words giving him _ideas._

He shifts down just a little, until he’s level with her chest, and lets his kisses map the skin there. He keeps them light, teasing, a hint of tongue here and there, but nothing too heated. Just a lazy meandering of her tits – one that studiously avoids her nipples entirely. Oh sure, he skates near them, even lets his tongue draw a teasing trail right to the edge of one – but then he closes his mouth in a kiss right _next_ to it, another right below it, another lower.

“I know what you’re doing,” she finally tells him, a bit breathless.

Robin lifts his head up to smirk down at her; she lifts one brow, the corner of her mouth pulling up in a way she can’t quite suppress.

“Your idea,” he reminds her, and then he presses a kiss right over her heart and urges, “Roll over; I owe you a massage.”

If he doesn’t do it now, they’ll never get around to it. And she’d made a point to tell him how much she’d been looking forward to it, so they can’t have that.

She lets out a little hum of anticipation, as Robin sits up to grab the candle. Regina reorients, grabbing her towel and spreading it out over the sheets head-to-foot, and then stretching out on top of it and closing her eyes.

Robin takes a moment to simply admire her. The way the light catches on her curves, the peaceful set of her profile, the way her ribs expand and contract as she takes a deep breath. Her toes wiggle slightly, her hips shift just a little.

Christ, he’s so lucky. So, so lucky that the worst of his crimes to her right now is keeping pilfered knickers in his pocket. That she’s here with him, like this, trusting him, letting him have full rein of her body. Letting him touch her as much as he wants.

A month ago, he’d have laughed at the very idea of being able to spend a night like this without all the guilt and pain between them.

And yet, here they are. Him shirtless in her bedroom, her in just that thong (her ass looks so good like this, he wants to take a bite of it), while he shifts onto his knees on the bed and finally grabs the little jar of melted oil off her nightstand. It’s warm to the touch, enough that he dips his finger in to test the temperature. Hot, but not scalding.

Still, he holds it several inches above her as he tips it and lets a line drip over the length of her spine.

Regina gasps softly, her lips parting, but she doesn’t wince, or hiss, or otherwise complain, so he assumes the sound was a good one.

Still, he asks, “Too warm?”

“Mm,” she hums. “No, it’s alright. A little warm, but it doesn’t hurt.”

It’ll cool a bit before he needs more anyway, so Robin sets it aside and runs his fingers through the oil on her back, spreading it over, around, then pressing in along the side of her spine and kneading up, up, up to her shoulders. She lets out a soft little sound, not even quite a moan, but it makes Robin smile anyway. He traces his way back down, then presses back up, and then he picks a shoulder (her right) and focuses there for a while, pressing, kneading, working steadily at the knots he can feel along her shoulder blade. Not deeply enough to hurt, not enough to work them out entirely, but enough to ease them a bit, he hopes.

Regina sighs softly, licks her lips, breathes. One spot he finds draws a little moan from her – a low, pleased little sound that Robin stores up in his brain for later repetition at opportune times.

As soon as it happens, though, she swallows and murmurs, “Sorry.”

“For what?” he asks, working over the spot again and watching her lashes flutter.

“Moaning; I think it’s a massage faux pas.”

“I don’t think that rule applies when you’re being massaged by someone who’s been inside you in the last seventy-two hours,” he tells her matter-of-factly and she snorts a little laugh, her shoulders shaking under his touch.

“Fair point,” she chuckles, eyes closed all the while.

“I want to hear how good it feels,” he tells her quietly. “Don’t hold back.”

He works that spot for another thirty seconds or so, and her next moan is deeper, less inhibited. Robin makes it his mission to find every spot that will draw that sound out of her.

He finds another along the opposite shoulder, higher up, nearer her neck – discovers that a good, firm kneading of the top of her shoulders makes her breath deepen, that getting her spine to pop just so with his knuckles makes her _Unh_ deliciously, that digging his thumbs in circles over her lower back makes her hips press into the bed, makes her breath thicken.

He’d been hard when he’d started, is still hard now, but the urgency has waned in favor of the simple enjoyment of _learning_ her.

There’s a tiny mole just to the right of her spine. A ticklish spot he accidentally unearths on the left side of her ribcage.

She has a little round scar that his thumb presses around, over, down here low on her back. A private little secret he’s happy to learn. There had been another near one of her shoulders too, come to think of it.

“How old were you when you had the chicken pox?”

The corner of her mouth curves, her voice thick and a little slurred as she answers, “Six. ‘S one on m’right hip too...”

He runs his hands there, peers at her skin, finds the little recessed dot high on the curve of her hip, and smiles.

“So there is.”

“I wasn’t s’posed to scratch,” she sighs, then one eye cracks open, her smirk deepening. “So I wiggled on the bed. Wasn’t scratching.”

Robin chuckles at her, gives her a stroke up her spine and back down, a caress more than anything; it makes her shiver, then settle with a contented sigh.

“Should’ve made you do this sooner,” she murmurs as Robin reaches for the oil again.

“Relaxing?” he asks as he pours a line carefully down her thigh, her calf; Regina’s toes curl.

Her “Mmhmm,” is more of a moan than anything.

He sets the oil aside, tells her, “Good,” and then presses his knuckles in a line up her calf. She surprises him, lets out this guttural groan that goes straight to his cock, her breath hitching. Robin pauses, asks her, “Really?”

“High heels,” she points out breathlessly. “Tight calves.”

“Ah.”

Robin takes his time with said tight calf, working the muscle with his thumbs, his knuckles, the heel of his palm, and drinking in every moan and groan it works out of her. By the time he moves onto her thigh, her breath is deeper, but quicker, and the way he digs the heel of his hand in and presses it into the muscle and up, up, makes her moan again and squirm slightly.

“Good?” he checks; her answer is a contented sigh and nod.

Her thighs, he discovers, have her responsive in a whole new way. She’d enjoyed the back massage – had gone ever more boneless and relaxed, sinking into the bed as he’d worked kink after kink from her, had popped and loosened and unwound. Her calf, that seems to have been a much-needed relief. Those had been noises of appreciation, of satisfaction, of discomfort dislodged and abated.

Her thigh, though… well, massaging that just seems to rile her up. Her muscles tense and release under his touch, and she squirms, her hips pressing into the bed, relaxing. Her moans sit higher in her throat, her breath going deeper, deeper, when he rubs higher, further in. It has temptation itching at him, has him wanting to knead over that biteable curve of her arse, wanting to massage higher and higher and further and further in, until he can’t justifiably call it her thigh anymore and just has to give up the goat and admit he’s rubbing her out.

And he will do that, absolutely – she’d been pretty clear about wanting it, about everything-but.

But he still has one tight calf to unwind, so he abandons her thigh and reaches for more oil, trailing it down her neglected leg, and giving a thorough work-up to that calf as well. And it seems rude to skip her feet entirely (he knows they will, if he really gets focused on her thighs, her rear, her front), so he takes a minute to roll his knuckles into the arch of each one, to give each of her toes a little tug, earning a couple of satisfying little pops for his trouble.

When he finally moves on to giving her thighs the attention they deserve, he gives them each another warm pour of oil, then sets about trying to melt her. He teases, slicks the oil over her skin, up her hamstrings and over her arse until she’s gleaming delightfully, her tongue creeping out to wet her lips, her fingers fisting lazily and then uncurling.

And then he starts to knead, and rub, starting at her knee and working up, up, up, squeezing and stroking over the outside of her thighs, across the backs of them, leaving her sensitive inner thighs mostly untouched aside from the occasional not-so-accidental graze of his fingertips. And then he drags his fingertips down her, four splayed over each thigh, digging into the muscle as he strokes down, down, and she lets out a deep moan, her hips arching, rocking.

Robin grins. Perfect.

He slides his hand in, rubs firmly up the inside of one thigh, down the other, then up again, back down. He switches to a kneading massage, leisurely making his way up bit by bit, inch by inch, over her left thigh. He’s halfway up, enjoying the delightful chorus of her quiet moans, when he notices her shift her right leg, opening her thighs an inch, making more room for him.

Robin feels a little ripple of satisfaction and slows his touch, kneading deeper, but at a snail’s pace.

Regina moans and breathes out, “Bastard.”

He just laughs at her, a low chuckle in the back of his throat. “You’re enjoying it.”

Her answer is roughly akin to “Mmmnah…” a half-moan, half-yes as her hips squirm and writhe again.

He makes it, finally, to the top of her thigh, and then he just stays there, stroking, caressing, digging fingers and thumbs into the muscle again and again, just shy of where it would be so satisfying. Regina’s toes curl, her fingers clench, her breath hitches and gasps. He watches her jaw drop slightly, listens to the high, needy moan she lets loose, watches her tongue lick across her lip again. And then he veers up, gives her rear a good, kneading squeeze and the breath explodes out of her.

He has to bite his lip not to laugh at that, far too pleased with himself at being able to coax the reaction from her (except he’s not _too_ pleased, is he? He’s exactly as pleased as he should be).

He tells her, “I hope you know how incredible you look in a thong,” as he massages one slippery cheek, and then the other, adding, “I’m really enjoying this view,” before his hands glide down the thigh he _hadn’t_ just worked over. He starts on this one from the knee up, just like before.

She moans his name, “ _Robin_ ,” and it’s the best fucking thing he’s ever heard. And then she gasps, “This is payback, isn’t it?”

Robin grins, and tells her, “No, love. This is foreplay.”

Regina turns her face into the mattress for a second and _moans_.

He’s barely started on her thigh when the left one creeps just a bit _further_ left, her hips rocking plaintively, as she moans quietly again. It lets in just enough light that he can see a little dark patch in the teal right over her crotch. She’s _wet_. Wet enough for it to show, and he can only imagine how good she must feel to touch, how slippery and soaked. If they weren’t all oily, he’d drop a hand down to give himself a stroke through his sweats, a little bit of friction to ease the tension building at the base of his cock from watching her grow more and more aroused by the simple touch of his hands.

But they _are_ oily, so instead of touching himself, he touches her, presses his thumbs into her muscle in a way that makes her breath shake and works his way up until the muscles in her thighs are twitching, her hips rocking rhythmically to steal what little friction she can manage, her breath coming in aroused, hitching pants.

When his hands slide up to her ass again and squeeze, she moans, deeply. And then he tells her, “Turn over.”

Her breath rushes out in a whoosh and she nods, pushes herself up slightly and rolls onto her back. She turns her head side to side a little, working out something in her neck and then settling into the mattress again.

Her cheeks are a little flushed, her nipples tight and hard, and her gaze is wanting, needy, as she watches the way he lifts the jar of oil over her chest and lets it drizzle in a line down her sternum, toward her navel. It’s cooling now, getting a little thicker, but he thinks this is the last he’ll need of it, so it’s no bother.

Regina arches slightly under the pour, panting harder in anticipation, her eyes falling shut when he starts rubbing the oil into her skin, smearing it across her belly, then up her chest, rubbing it over her tits and then grasping at her nipples with slippery fingers and giving them a squeeze. Her head grinds back into the bed, a high, desperate little moan spilling from her, and one of her knees shifts, lifts, spreading her thighs open as her hips buck against nothing.

Fuck, this is hot, _she_ is hot. He’s hard as marble in his sweats, eager for her – wants to watch her come, maybe twice for good measure, and then sink himself into her and fuck her nice and deep until they’re both slippery with oil and sweat, clutching at each other, kissing, rocking, fucking.

He stops short of cursing their arrangement, because he knows it’s the only reason he’s here tonight, with her, tugging at her nipples, pinching, rolling, letting them slip easily through his oiled fingers, watching her belly tense and tremble. He stops short of cursing it, but God, he _wants_ her tonight. She’s right – wanting is acute, and enjoyable. It’s tension and the promise of release, and there’s something good to be said for that, but there’s also a whole lot of good to be said for slipping into a woman who is this aroused, and feeling her come on your cock.

But he’s not doing that tonight, and he won’t push her, so he shoves the thought back, shoves the wanting back, and down, away, and focuses on her. Right in front of him, moaning desperately as he gives her nipples another slow, firm roll, then another, faster, another.

She makes that _Guh_ sound he loves so much, and then gasps, “God, Robin, don’t stop,” and he, well… stops.

Her eyes pop open, betrayed, her brow pinching, a needy, “Wha—?” on her lips.

He hadn’t _meant_ to stop, not really, it’s just that nearly every time she’s come in the last week with him, she’s hit a point, a point where she was getting close to that edge and those two words had tumbled from her lips: _Don’t stop_.

So they’re not exactly unexpected, he just wasn’t expecting them quite _yet_ , and not just from teasing her nipples. Robin splays his fingers over her, cups her tits, rubs his thumbs over her nipples, and asks, “Are you about to come? From this?”

“I’m about to _die_ from _arousal_ ,” she pants, and Robin snickers, giving her nipple another tweak and asking, _Oh are you?_ She squirms, and gasps, “Robin, _please_. I’m so close.”

“Mm,” he says, and then he shifts a little, stretching himself out alongside her and letting his hand skate down her belly. He murmurs, “Since you asked so nicely…” and her eyes drop shut on a grateful _Oh, thank God…_ as he fingers dip beneath her thong.

She’s fucking soaked.

His fingers slip right down, skating over her swollen clit, and she gasps and moans and spreads her thighs open wider for him, presses into his touch. Fuck, this is hot. (God, she’d feel incredible around him.)

She really is _so_ close, he can tell in the way she fists restlessly at the sheet, at him, her hand groping for his thigh, gripping his sweats.

She cries out, “Robin, _oh!_ ” and he has to shush her softly, has to remind her the boys are just downstairs. She bites at her lip, lets loose a muffled, “Fuck!”

Robin rubs her clit harder.

He doesn’t know where to look, what to take in. Whether to watch the way her thighs shake, or how she’s sucking in deep breaths through her nose, her hips jerking, her eyes rolling back slightly. This time when she gasps for him not to stop, he listens, keeps going, rubs her clit in faster, tighter circles until she squeezes her eyes shut tight, and whimpers, and gropes blindly for one of her pillows, turning her face into it and muffling the little shout she lets loose when she finally comes.

She stiffens and jerks, and he has to keep up with the way her hips twitch, the way she accidentally dislodges him with a lurch to or fro as her orgasm rocks her. Her hand is clenched hard in his sweats, the other still pressing the pillow to her face, and he takes a fair amount of pride in how _hard_ she seems to have come from less than a minute of him rubbing her clit.

When her thighs close tightly around his hand, he stills his touch, and they fall back open, all her tensed muscles flopping gracelessly loose as she gasps for breath. Robin lets his middle finger skim down, lets it trace between her lower lips, feeling how _ready_ she is, how _aroused_. She’s so hot, and full, and he wants to see her, wants to taste her, wants to hold her thighs and lap at her clit while she comes like that _again_.

He presses a kiss to her sweaty cheek, another to the hinge of her jaw, and murmurs, “I’m going to go down on you, babe.”

But Regina shakes her head at him, lets out a breathy “Mm-mm,” of denial and Robin thinks his jaw might actually drop.

“No?” he questions.

She smiles at him, all sex-addled, and tells him, “Next week.”

It rips a groan from him, has him dropping his head to her shoulder and asking, “Seriously?” He lifts his head again, insisting, “Let yourself have the damn cookie, Regina. I would desperately love to eat the cookie.”

She snorts a little at that, grinning and pointing out, “Robin, there’s no way I could be quiet enough tonight if you were eating me out. I’m far too turned on to hold it in. Next weekend, when there are no children in the house, and I can moan as loudly as I want, _then_ you can go down on me.”

Well, that’s a fair enough reason, he supposes.

So he relents, telling her, “Fine – next weekend. But I swear to God, if you put me off again, you will have another crying child to deal with, and it will be me.”

She laughs at him again, turning and pressing into him in a way that inadvertently makes his hand shift against her, his fingertip sliding right up against her opening. Robin figures, _Fuck it_ , and lets the whole digit sink into her (it’s a mistake, she feels fucking _incredible_ ; it makes his cock ache).

Regina moans softly, rocking against his finger (apparently she’s not too turned on to be quiet for _that_ ), and then pressing her lips to his before murmuring, “I promise, babe. One week and you can go down on me.”

His heart does a little double-knock at the casual flirtiness of the endearment, the way it sounds on her lips, the way she kisses it into his. He kisses her back, teases his tongue against her until she opens for him, and then he shifts his hand ever so, turns his wrist until he can sink a second finger into her along with the first, and start to fuck her with them.

She hums appreciatively, but then her thighs clench around his wrist, her mouth tipping out of the kiss long enough for her to murmur, “Lie back. It’s my turn.”

Robin’s fingers go still inside of her and he pulls back slightly. “Oh?”

Her brows bounce once, one of her hands pushing at his chest as she nods and teases, “If you think _you_ can be quiet.”

Robin swallows thickly; if she means what he thinks she does…

He lets his fingers slip out of her, shifting onto his back as she sits up and stretches, then moves to her knees. She reaches for his sweats, rucking them and his boxer briefs down as Robin sucks the taste of her from his fingers (if she won’t let him drink from the well, he’s damn well going to take whatever he can get). And then she’s straddling him, biting her lip as she reaches between them and grasps his cock, giving it a slow stroke and telling him softly, “You have no idea how badly I want this right now.”

He moans – at both the feel of her and her words – and reminds her, “You can have whatever you want, love.”

“Mm.” She shakes her head, lets her hand slip away from him and presses a kiss to his chest. “Not tonight.” And then she kisses lower, lower still. Open-mouthed and hot. “But you’re always so good at telling me what you want…” Again, lower. One of her tits grazes his cock – it’s not on purpose, he doesn’t think, but it still makes the breath shake out of him. “I thought I should return the favor.”

The next kiss is low enough that his cock bumps against her chin, and Robin groans softly, his voice gone rough as he points out, “This is a bit hypocritical, you know.”

Regina looks up, quirks a brow. “Would you like me to stop?”

“God, no,” he tells her, dropping a hand down to thread through her hair. “Just pointing it out. Unfair.”

His cock is in her hand again, suddenly, her grip firm, slow, as she pumps him. “You know, most men would probably be thrilled to have a woman who didn’t insist they go down equitably.”

He opens his mouth to answer her, but then she laves her tongue over him from root to tip and his brain stops for a second. It doesn’t restart until after she closes her mouth around the tip of him, giving it a soft suck and then pulling off to do the whole thing again.

And then he says, “If – mm, fuck, love – If that’s what you think, you need to be fucking better men.”

He’s been watching her through half-lidded eyes as she takes her time with lips and tongue, and she smirks up at him then, makes this face that says _Yeah, probably_ , and then dips her head back down and sucks him in. He sinks into her mouth, her tongue swirling over the first few inches of him, and Robin lets that hand twined loosely in her hair spread and scratch at her scalp, his breath going deep.

She bobs her head over him and he watches himself disappear in and out of her lips, her hand working the base of him for a few long, indulgent minutes that have him gasping softly. And then she sucks harder, draws up, up, letting her tongue run beneath his foreskin when she reaches the head.

Robin moans, his eyes dropping shut, fingers curling in her hair as she circles it over him, once, twice, a slow third time. And then she finds that sensitive spot on the bottom and wiggles her tongue against it until he trembles and groans, “ _Fuck_ , babe…”

She sucks him in again, deep, then releases him with a soft pop. He expects her to take him in again, to give him another teasing lick, or maybe ease his foreskin back and tease the tip of him some more, but she doesn’t do any of that.

Instead, she scoots back up the bed, presses her lips to his with a little moan, and then breathes, “I want you so much. Doing that’s just making me want you _more_. I need to feel you against me.”

He nods, dumbly, still a bit stuck on the feel of her mouth on him, too much to really appreciate her words. But then she’s sitting back, shimmying out of that thong and then straddling him again, kissing him eagerly as she reaches down and lines his cock up just right against her, dragging her clit up and down the length of it, and God, she’s _so_ fucking wet for him; it’s torture to be so close and not have her.

But torture’s the name of the game tonight, and she reminds him so by breaking the kiss and asking, “Can we finish like this? Almost, but not quite?”

“That’s what you want?” he asks, his hands coasting up her back, down again, settling at her hips as they begin to rock against him in a lazy rhythm.

Her lashes flutter, her voice velvety and close when she moans, “No… but it’ll get the job done.”

Robin presses up into her and thinks she might be the death of him.

 

**.::.**

 

Regina is on fire.

Something about having his hands on every blessed inch of her, something about the slipperiness of the oil, about the release of coming under his touch, about the sheer _enjoyment_ of getting to be intimate with him without guilt or anger or hurt feelings… it has her insatiable for him.

Knowing she can’t have him right now just makes her want him _more_. All she can think about is him, inside of her, of how good he feels, of how close he is right know as they move together, his cock right up against where she needs him, her clit still sensitive from her orgasm as it drags against him.

He’s gorgeous beneath her – those shoulders she’d been admiring all day sheened with sweat again (or maybe she’s gotten him oily, who knows, she’s still a bit slippery in places), those blue eyes gone dark and needy. He’s biting that lip again, watching her as she sits up on him, his hands restless on her hips, her breasts (she enjoys that, _loves_ that, moans appreciatively and leans herself forward to kiss him again).

They keep it up for several long minutes – she loses track of the time they spend rocking and grinding, and gasping and moaning, breathing each other’s air, feeling each other’s skin. She levers herself up again, drags herself over the full length of him, presses down into him and _feels_ him against her.

She’s on fire. She’s going to combust. (She’s going to come, but not _quite_ yet, she keeps slowing down when she wants to speed up, keeps drawing it out, doesn’t want it to end.)

And then she slides up just as he rocks down, the timing of it just right so that when each of them reverses course they notch together _just so_ , the tip of him sinking into her. They both freeze, Regina on a gasp, Robin on a desperate groan, and she looks down at him, takes in the sight of him, sweaty and grasping at her thighs, his chest rising and falling just as rapidly as hers is as they hover there, poised. Even just that little bit of him inside her feels good – not enough to satisfy her, but enough to have her tantalizingly close to the _promise_ of satisfaction, and for a second she’s torn.

This is all so desperately hot; she’s soaked (he’d sunk into her so easily, slipped his way right in, she’s so wet, so _ready_ for him), and trembling, and it would be so easy to lower herself the rest of the way, let him fill her, to ride them both to a no doubt bone-shattering climax. It would feel so _good_ , and for a moment, just for a second, she thinks she’s going to do it. Her fingers fist against his chest, her eyes lock on his, and he gives her a little nod, a desperate encouragement, his fingertips pressing into her quads as he breathes, “Fuck me, babe.”

That’s all it takes to snap her back to her senses, and she smirks, shaking her head and rising up a little so he slips out of her again. Then she drags her clit down the length of his cock, gasping, “Next week,” as he grinds out a frustrated groan of her name and tips his head back into her pillows.

She watches the muscles in his neck tense, and laughs softly, temptation won over by the thrill of having him putty beneath her like this. And then he’s not so putty-like, his hands finding her hips and gripping as he grinds up hard into her, one hand careening up to grasp behind her neck, tugging her mouth down to his as he starts a quick, hard rhythm between their bodies.

Regina moans eagerly and keeps pace, slip-sliding over his cock as he mutters against her lips, “You… are evil…” She chuckles darkly, runs her tongue over his lower lip, then nips it, moaning again as he bucks up against her and groans, “So fucking hot…”

Regina laughs again, sitting up and pushing her hair away from her face, lacing her fingers at her crown and shutting her eyes, letting herself rock and grind against him for a few minutes, letting herself just _feel_ and _enjoy_ , and who needs sex when you can have _this?_

(She does. She needs sex. Now, desperately, but the _needing_ it feels so good when it’s right there for the taking, so she’s gonna just… do this some more. Need. Want. Hold back. And then in a week, she’s gonna fuck him until they’re both screaming.)

It doesn’t take long before her hips are starting to jerk, the friction growing hotter, sweeter, her palm slipping slightly on his chest, her nipples aching for attention. She swallows thickly (her throat is dry from all this heavy breathing), and gropes for one of his hands, dragging it up to her breast and squeezing, begging breathlessly, “Please!”

Robin moans and brings his other hand up to join it, cupping her breasts, finding her nipples, and giving them tandem squeezes between thumb and forefinger. He’s not gentle, and thank God, she doesn’t need him to be, the delicious pressure sending a shock of pleasure straight down to her clit.

Regina gasps sharply and nods, and he does it again, again, her eyes squeezing shut tightly as she leans forward a little, both hands bracing against his ribs as she grinds greedily against him, and stutters, “ _Oh, fu—_ Don’t sto— _Oh_ , don’t stop!”

She hears him, a grunted, thick, “Never… oh… God, never…”

He squeezes and tugs and pinches, not in much of a rhythm, he’s not faring any better than she is at the moment. She’s dully aware of his ragged breathing, the jerky up and down of his chest against her palms—and Regina is suddenly quaking, her nails digging in as she chases her release.

She’s muttering, gasping, she doesn’t even know what, but she hears him respond, hears his, “Are you—oh, fuck, babe—are you close? Hm?” and answers with a half-delirious _Uh huh!_ And then he’s suddenly more focused, his hands managing to find a rhythm, treating her nipples to these sinful, rolling twists and her pulse is rushing in her ears, his voice underneath it, urging her, “Do it – _fuck, mm –_ L-let go, love… Come on m—oh, _mm!_ —come on my cock, love.”

Oh God, that shouldn't be so hot (it should, it absolutely should), but it _does things_ to her, and she nods eagerly, lets out another “D-don’t stop!” as he urges another _Let go!_ and she nods, nods, and then it hits her.

She comes, hard, crying out, “ _Oh!_ ” and then clamping her lips shut to keep quiet as her whole body quakes with the pleasure of it. Robin keeps one hand teasing her nipple but drops the other to grip firmly on her twitching hips, holding her steady as he grinds up harder, firmer, faster, and she whimpers, feels her eyes roll back, her head tipping back as she lets out strangled moan after strangled moan. And then he has both hands on her hips, guiding her against his cock, and her elbows buckle, her torso slumping down on his as she lets out a pleasured whimper into his neck, everything still clenching, pulsing, Robin’s cock rubbing again, again, against her clit, harder, faster. She presses a sloppy, salty kiss into the side of his neck and then he groans in relief and comes, gasping and jerking, a sudden warm slipperiness joining the sweat on their bellies.

He relaxes beneath her, and Regina deflates into him, her heart hammering, her limbs vibrating, her lungs working overtime.

Robin lets out a little whimper that makes her grin, and then he pants, “You’re going to be the death of me,” and she laughs softly and lifts her head to grin down at him.

“But it’ll be a good death, yeah?”

He grins back at her, chuckles, “Fuck,” and then, “The best. God.” Clumsy fingers push at the hair falling into her face, tucking it back behind her ear, stroking down her neck, and she closes her eyes to savor the sensation of his caress.

“Is it Saturday yet?” he asks hopefully, and she snickers, cracking an eye open and pointing out that yes, it is, technically. Robin jabs a finger playfully into her shoulder, and she chuckles and rolls off of him, flopping gracelessly onto her back, one hand settling on her belly and accidentally skating across the cum smeared there.

She lifts her fingers, rubbing them together, and declares, “We’re both going to need showers, I think.” 

Robin rolls onto his side next to her, drawing a fingertip up her belly himself and looking far too pleased about the mess he’s made of her. “Showers?” he asks, “Or… shower?”

Regina bites her lip, smiling coyly, and asking, “The boys are definitely asleep?”

“God, I hope so; we weren’t exactly quiet.”

Regina snorts, and nods, agreeing with a knowing, “Mm.” And then she turns her head and draws him into a kiss, their legs tangling even as she mutters against his mouth, “Then I suppose _shower_ will do.”

When they collapse into bed half an hour later, she’s had yet another trembling orgasm, her whole body feeling blissed out and floaty, cozy as she curls her pajama-clad body around his, her cheek against the cottony softness of his t-shirt, her bare knee tucking between his sweatpant-clad legs for warmth. He’s promised to leave again once she’s asleep, swears up and down that he will not nod off this time, that he’ll be downstairs before the boys wake up in the morning.

For the first time in she doesn’t know how long, she slips into sleep without a single blessed thought in her mind beyond how soothing it is when Robin’s fingertips trace up and down her arm, shoulders, her side…

He’s gone when she wakes, but she never feels him leave.


End file.
